


Another Day

by Snag



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Rescue Me
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-16
Updated: 2010-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:52:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 34,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snag/pseuds/Snag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The firefighters of 62 Truck in the FDNY get a woman in their house. Is she more woman than they can handle?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just God Damned Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> Warning (if any): Strong language, adult situations, violence, graphic descriptions of burn victims, and gender, religious and racial epithets. Special Note: The dialog used in this show is Not Nice. Firefighters talk and act in many different ways as a defense mechanism for the terrible things they see. The opinions expressed by the characters do not reflect the opinions of the author or the creators; I'm just trying to portray them as faithfully as possible. (No pun intended.)
> 
> I don't know for sure if the role I've put Xander in, is feasible in an actual NY fire station, so I claim creative license for his volunteer duties.
> 
> Originally posted by me at Twisting the Hellmouth and for a Live Journal community challenge. The Twisting the Hellmouth August 09 Fic-A-Day competition: http://community.livejournal.com/twistedshorts/

Tommy Gavin was having a pisser of a week. When you go from thinking your daughter needs to take a pregnancy test, to finding out that it was really for your soon-to-be ex-wife after an ill-advised romp with you, it tends to ruin your day. Coupled with all the other headaches that he had afoot, he was not inclined to be accommodating to anyone for the foreseeable future. Not that he was exactly warm and cuddly to begin with. His fellow firefighters would best be able to politely describe him as 'prickly'. Sometimes, they left off the 'ly' if he was being especially difficult.

Tommy parked his truck outside of the firehouse he worked at, slammed the door and immediately fished a cigarette out of his jacket to light up. Word was they were going to ban smoking in the firehouse sometime soon, and he figured he might as well enjoy while he could. As his tall, lanky form stalked through the garage doors of the firehouse, he saw a new person working busily in there, exchanging out the oxygen tanks for each of the trucks. He was dressed in the standard 'off duty' wear of a firefighter, except he also had a black eyepatch on. But he was performing the job he was doing quickly and efficiently, so he couldn't exactly snap the kid's head off directly.

Instead, Tommy made his way into the kitchen area where his fellow firefighters Franco, Garrity and Lou were lounging around having an early lunch. Tommy jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, pointing back at the garage. "Who the hell is that?" he asked without preamble.

"Volunteer," Lou replied absently, clearly more interested in the sandwich he was eating and the newspaper he was reading. "Here to help us out during the busy hours when we don't have time to prep gear ourselves. Name's Harris."

Tommy blinked and looked over his shoulder quickly before looking back in the kitchen again. "Really? We got a volunteer helper without having to scream about it first?" While he was saying this, Chief Jerry Riley came padding into the room and Tommy fixed his attention on his boss. "Chief, who'd you have to bribe, fuck or kill to get us a volunteer?"

The Chief shrugged, "Nobody. He specifically requested to come here."

"In _our_ neighborhood? Is he crazy, stupid or something worse? I thought only the houses in the suburbs got a helper monkey." Tommy scratched his head in confusion, briefly forgetting about his current state of personal affairs.

"Nah, I checked him out." Chief Riley shook his head as he began picking through the sandwiches available. "His volunteer paperwork says he used to be in construction 'till he had the accident that lost him his eye. He was working for a women's shelter before he moved to New York, said he likes helping out, even if he can't do any of the dangerous work anymore."

"God damn." Franco took his ever present toothpick from mis mouth in disbelief. "Headquarters did something right for a change."

"Did what right?" Silletti, better known as the Probie, came in at the end of the conversation after taking a shower.

"Sent us a helper without us bitchin' and cryin' about it for months on end." Garrity provided.

"Does this mean I don't have to wash the rig every day? Cool." The Probie seemed pleased with this turn of events.

"Oh, no, no, no." Tommy shook his head. "He can't wash the rig, not with that eye of his."

Silletti looked like someone just told him there was no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. "What? Why not?"

"Safety regulations," Lou explained. "He might get vertigo while washing the top of the truck, sue the department."

"Then we wouldn't have our helper anymore, and headquarters wouldn't want to send us a new one." Chief Riley added.

"So, you're going to continue to wash the rig and any other shit job we can come up with," Tommy concluded with relish. "And if you really piss us off, you'll be doing all his work as well, and we'll let him just kick back, drink coffee and read the god damn sports page."

"Only if it's to read about the Yankees losing." A new voice came from the doorway to the kitchen. Harris was wearing a teasing grin, an expression that seemed to be his default mood. His announcement was met with a chorus of boos and a few thrown napkins. "Hey, I'm from California, what'd you expect?"

Chief Riley waved Harris into the room. "C'mon in, kid, I'll introduce you around." He began to point out various members of the crew. "Tommy Gavin, Lieutenant Kenny Shea (call him Lou), Franco Rivera, Sean Garrity, Mike Silletti." He paused for a beat. "But you can just call him Probie."

"Or FNG," Franco added.

"Or dumbass," was Garrity's contribution.

"Pinhead." Lou chimed in.

"Jack-off." Tommy suggested.

"Or any damned thing else you can come up with," Chief Riley concluded, while Silletti sat and looked mutinous at a volunteer getting better treatment than he was.

"Think I'll stick to 'Probie'," Harris chuckled, recognizing the signs of hazing. "The rest of that is just too much to remember." He began the rounds of hand shaking, giving Silletti a reassuring nod to let him know that while there was much ball-busting to be had in the firehouse, Harris was not going to be one of the frequent contributers. "And call me 'Xander'. You know the old gag about looking around for your father when you hear your own last name."

"Xander it is," Tommy agreed. He had a pretty decent relationship with his own father, but he knew guys that didn't, so he wasn't fussed about it. The suggestion went through with general agreement among the crew.

Having gotten his identity establish, Xander went over to the coffee pot and sniffed curiously before making a face. "Jesus Christ. What'd you brew this with, crushed car batteries?" He poured the offending coffee out with a look of contempt.

A round of jeers went out to Silletti. Chief Riley held a hand out greedily to Lou. "Pay up! I told you it was battery acid." Lou rolled his eyes in disgust and fished a five dollar bill out of his pocket, slapping it reluctantly into the Chief's hand. Riley beamed with avarice for a few moments, until he spotted Xander prepping a new pot of coffee. "Nah, c'mon kid, let him make it over, you don't have to do that."

Xander shook his head firmly. "I only have one stomach lining, Chief. I'd hate to dissolve it before I even have a chance to develop a kidney stone." The assembled firefighters took this opportunity to give Silletti further flak for his sub-par coffee making ability.

"I tell you, kid, you're already a life saver. We were this close to having to register Probie's coffee as a weapon of mass destruction." Tommy patted Xander on the shoulder as he made his way around the table to peer at the remaining sandwiches.

"Don't get too starry eyed there, Gavin." Chief Riley stood up from his chair. "Our coffee savior comes with a price - we're gettin' a woman in the firehouse, boys. Today."

"Oh, Christ." One form or another of this sentiment went around the table, save Xander, whose reaction was not visible as he prepared the coffee with his back to the crew and did some general tidying of the kitchen. Xander waited for the coffee to brew and peered around in cabinets so he could start learning where everything was, while he listened to the crew talk about how they were going to 'freeze the new girl out' and make her feel unwelcome.

When that subject had run itself into the ground, Xander poured a cup of coffee and adulterated it to specific preference before announcing, "Coffee's ready." The crew all lined up to inspect the new guy's caffeinated offerings.

"Sweet merciful shit." Tommy took a sip with his eyes closed. "What're you doing, volunteering in a firehouse? You oughta be running a coffee joint of your own. Call it, 'Just God Damned Coffee'. Coffee, sugar, cream, and that's _it_."

Xander shrugged modestly. "I was kind of a night owl back in high school. Learning how to brew coffee was a survival technique more than anything."

"Don't forget the importance of a box of donuts," a new voice called, this one soft, husky and undeniably feminine.

The fire crew turned with varying expressions of dumbfounded on their faces as they were confronted with a brunette wearing a FDNY t-shirt, (perhaps a size too small), jeans and a leather biker's jacket. She glanced at the only person wearing a white shirt in the room. "This the house for 61 Truck?" she asked, sounding vaguely bored.

Chief Riley stood up, chin held high. "That's right. Jerry Riley. What can I do for you?"

"I'm Faith. Guess I'm stuck with you." She looked appraisingly at the room in general, and it was clear from something in her expression that she found them wanting.

Xander promptly handed her a cup of coffee. Faith took the steaming mug with a wink that the rest of the room couldn't see, and Xander went out to the garage to do a bit more work.

"Where y'going, kid?" Chief Riley asked, shaking off his temporary shock.

"Figured I'd finish up what I was doing before." Xander shot a sly smile over his shoulder. "Besides, she doesn't need my help." With that, Xander left the unsuspecting firefighters to their fate.


	2. Distracted

The crew remained staring in stunned silence for several moments after they were confronted with the appearance of the spy in the House of Testosterone. A spy that, given other circumstances, they would do their level best to put the moves on with wild abandon.

Faith arched an eyebrow after several moments. "Please tell me you guys don't sit and stare like this when there's a fire."

That seemed to snap the crew out of their stupor. Lou glanced around significantly. "Ice," he hissed, reminding them of their vow to give her the cold shoulder. They began to gravitate toward the door that Faith was standing in front of.

Except, she didn't seem inclined to get out of the way. "No."

Tommy leaned down as if he hadn't heard her. "No? No what?"

"No, we're not doing this," Faith explained semi-patiently.

"And to which 'this' do you refer?" Lou asked with faux-solicitousness.

"This whole riff where everyone avoids talking to me, tryin' to make me feel like the house pariah. Ain't gonna happen."

"Oh, really? And why's that?" Tommy leaned back with his arms folded, chin lifting slightly.

"Cause I really don't give a shit if you talk to me or not. So long as you talk when it matters, we're five by five the rest of the time." Faith abruptly reached out her hand to snap her fingers in front of Garrity's face. "Hey. Up here."

Garrity's ears began to turn red from being caught looking and brought his gaze back up to her face. "No! I was just… I saw this thing that…"

"Yeah?" Faith looked expectantly at Garrity waiting for the rest of the explanation. The rest of the crew looked at Garrity with a mix of trepidation and anticipation, much like one might wait for the crash in an inevitable car accident.

"I… was… just… checking out the zipper on your jacket," Garrity finally produced, pointing at the zipper that had ridden up the track of her open leather biker's jacket. Unfortunately, the zipper was presently over the very region that Garrity was trying to avoid looking at, talking about or acknowledging the existence of.

Faith looked down at Garrity's index finger, then down at herself, and finally back up at his face. "The zipper," she stated skeptically.

"Yeah, the zipper, that's all!" Garrity nodded hopefully.

"The zipper that you're still pointing at," Faith noted.

"What? No, I'm not - oh dear God!" Garrity jerked his hand back down to its side like it had caught on fire. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention, I was-"

"Distracted by my tits."

"Yeah, I – no, that's not it!"

Faith shook her head and decided to take a small modicum of pity on the bumbling firefighter. "One of you guys want to help him out?"

"Not really." Lou shrugged. "This is the most fun we've gotten out of him in weeks."

Chief Riley rubbed at his forehead. "Garrity."

"Yes Chief?"

"Stop talking."

"Okay Chief." Garrity hung his head, relieved and mortified all at once.

Faith suppressed a sigh. It wasn't like she hadn't expected something like this. Deciding that moving on was the better part of valor, she reached back and extracted a large manila envelope from under her jacket where it had been tucked into her waistband. Once she'd smoothed a wrinkle or two out of it, she offered it to Chief Riley. "Here. Transfer papers."

Chief Riley took the envelope from Faith and extracted the contents, Faith's record, test scores and the like up through the present. "Transferred in from Boston?"

"Yup."

He began to read through her exam scores and gave a grudging nod. "Not bad at all," Riley allowed.

"I know."

"Modest, too." Riley got an odd half-smile on his face. Strangely, she was striking him as just another cocky young firefighter ready to run into the mouth of Hell.

"Modest is for people that can't. I _can_." Faith was beginning to get bored with the proceedings.

Tommy interrupted, still curious about something he'd seen a few minutes prior. "You know our volunteer, Xander?"

"Yeah, we were friends back in California, so?"

He held his hands up peacefully, but his gaze never wavered. "Just wondered."

"Whatever. So, we all on the same page here? You want to pretend you don't know me outside of a job, fine. The calls come in, you put your ManPants on and deal with me just like anyone else, yeah?" Faith locked eyes with each of the crew in turn, not quite a challenge but not leaving much escape room.

The rest of the crew exchanged glances like a hot potato. "Let's see how you do on the job, first," Chief Riley stated, laying it out plainly.

"Fair enough." Apparently satisfied, Faith turned to walk back out into the truck bay and paused. "Chief? Before I forget, Peter told me to tell you 'hi'."

Chief Riley cleared his throat uncomfortably, not caring for a publically delivered message from his son in Boston, whom the crew had only recently learned was gay. But before he could say anything, Faith had left to where Xander was putting her bunker gear in the locker of their recently lost crewmember, Billy Warren.

The crew was briefly silent in the aftermath of Hurricane Faith. Finally, Tommy broke the ice. "Not exactly a girly type, is she?"

"I dunno, Tommy, she's got all the right equipment." Franco, predictably, was peering through the doorway with the professional interest of a skirt-chaser.

"Except the equipment that can carry an unconscious grown man out of a burning building without chipping a nail." Tommy snorted. "Goddamn FDNY. They make all these special allowances without taking the needs of the job into consideration, y'know?"

Riley was staring at Faith's file intently. "I wouldn't be too sure about that, Gavin."

"What?" Tommy peered over the Chief's shoulder to see what he was reading. In short order, he found what Riley had and murmured, "Holy shit."

Lou raised an eyebrow, "What is it? Special dispensation? Grandfathered in before the standards were set?"

Tommy and Chief Riley shook their heads. "No, she passed the physical with flying goddamn colors," Tommy replied.

"The one for women, sure." Franco shrugged. "So?"

"No, not the one for women. She left the Boston Academy at the head of her entire Probie class," Chief Riley explained. "Fifteen men, six women. She left them all in the dust."

While the crew was chewing on that, Xander was out in the garage staying out of Faith's way while she adjusted her gear. "You sure you still want to go through with this?" he asked gently.

"I kinda have to, right? This is where Giles said I was needed. Besides, I couldn't stay in Boston anymore." Faith moved her helmet around and checked out her coat.

"I'm just checking. You might be able to take them all in a fight, but they're still not going to make life easier on you. Peter told you what to expect." Xander folded his arms.

"I know. I'll deal."

Xander nodded dubiously. "You going to do a couple of sweeps before you come home?"

"Yeah, I marked where on the map in the living room." She seemed satisfied with the way her locker was arranged and closed the door. "You get my bike set up?"

"Stakes are in the seat hatch. Call me if you run into a problem? Also, might want to go move it. The spot you picked has a two hour limit."

"Yeah, yeah." Faith gave Xander a swat on the ass as she went to go move her bike and was rewarded by a satisfactory unmanly squeak and jumping on Xander's part.

"Y'know, I bet Buffy never did that to Giles." Xander grumbled, going back to swapping out oxygen tanks from the fire truck.


	3. Interlude - Giving Back

A Honda Accord pulled up in front of a set of gates and came to a stop in the drop off zone. The passengers didn't jump out right away, however.

"Are you certain you want to do this, Faith?" Giles asked, putting the rental in neutral.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Faith pushed a few errant locks of hair out of her eyes. "I know, I could stay if I wanted, but this is somethin' I feel like I gotta do."

Giles studied Faith quietly for several moments. "You don't owe anything. You spent your time in jail of your own accord, and Angel's interceding on your behalf with the courts - "

"That's not it, Rupert." Faith shook her head. "This has nothing to do with Finch or Professor Worth or any of that. I did my share of damage to Boston long before any of you guys met me, and I haven't done anything about that yet. Angel always said that redemption is an ongoing journey. So, I'm journeying. I've gotta be giving back somehow."

"Good enough, then." Giles nodded with a notable air of approval. "But do try and be careful not to outperform the other candidates _too_ much."

"Buzzkill."

"That appears to be my lot in life," Giles agreed with a sly look, before he turned serious again. "You've really come a long way, Faith. The person you've become isn't that angry young woman anymore; it's plain to all of us. I've no doubt you'll do well here."

"Physical stuff, sure. But I think I was absent the day they taught school." Faith fussed uncomfortably with her duffel bag.

"I think you'll find it's different when you're learning things that pertain directly to the job that you intend to do. You'll be fine." Giles gave Faith a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and the emotional bonding moment was done. Neither British Watcher nor Boston Slayer were much of a mix for heartfelt encounters.

"We'll see. Gonna be confusing, not having to go through a bunch of books to find out the cause of the fires, tho'."

Giles quirked a shoulder in a half-shrug. "People are the more likely suspect in this setting, it's true." He shifted topics for a moment. "Once you're through training and assigned to a fire station, I'll see what we can do about getting you a field Watcher." It was well known that with Giles running the organization, he wasn't going to be able to spend nearly as much time in the field as once he had.

Faith gathered her duffel bag into her lap with a shrug. "No big. It's not like I'm not used to going it solo."

"Still, you'll have enough on your plate, being a new firefighter and trying to fit in without adding in keeping tabs on the supernatural goings on. The days of the Slayer - er, Slayers, doing everything on their own are quite thoroughly over." Giles reached out to squeeze Faith's shoulder with something close to affection. "Good luck."

"Thanks." Faith replied roughly, then cleared her throat, and her moment of emotion was done. "See y'all at graduation, I guess."

With that, Faith slid out of the car and began to stride purposefully through the gates of the Boston Firefighting Academy.


	4. Used to Have a Face

Franco was rooting around in the fridge with a certain amount of disappointment. "Lou, you didn't make lunch today?"

"I made lunch yesterday, you greedy spic," came the none-too-PC response from the lieutenant down the hall.

"Greedy nothing, you mick. It's lunch time, I forgot who cooked, I was just askin'!" Franco shouted back without rancor; this was the type of talk that was heard day and night in the house.

"Ah, I see we're having a meeting of the United Nations today." Xander came into the kitchen holding, to Franco's delight, three flat, square boxes.

Franco absently pushed the refrigerator door closed. "Man, if that's going to save me from having to cook, I'll go join the god damn U.N. right now and my first official ambassadorial act will be to kiss Lou's wide Irish ass."

"_Pink_ wide Irish ass, if you please." Lou came in, nose twitching madly. "Do I smell sausage?"

"Among other things." Xander set the three pizza boxes down with a flourish and began opening them up.

Like moths to a flame, the rest of the crew began gravitating in. "Jesus, you're killin' me here, kid. This is going to shoot my diet all to hell," Chief Riley announced as he too made a beeline for anything involving sausage.

"Yeah, I think that particular event has long since passed," Tommy snorted, giving Riley's prominent belly a jab as he joined the hungry fire crew.

Faith sauntered into the room and leaned around Garrity to peer at the pizza offerings. "Hey, mostly meat products this time. Good boy."

"Huh?" Silletti blinked at her, not understanding the comment.

She jabbed a thumb at Xander. "Back in Cali, this guy and his friends had an interesting view on how pizza is supposed to be made. Vegetables everywhere. Might as well dump over a salad bar onto pizza dough and stuff it into the oven." Faith nabbed up a slice of the pizza and folded it in half before she began eating, to prevent the escape of errant toppings.

"We did not!" Xander protested.

"Yeah?" Faith turned around and gave him a look that read roughly as, _you know you're not going to win this argument_. "What do you consider your perfect pizza?"

"What?"

"Come on. List the toppings that would go on a pizza that only you were eating." Faith reached out to jab Xander in the shoulder with her fingertip.

"I don't know, it depends on what I was in the mood for!"

"Fine, then what you'd be in the mood for right now if you were only ordering for yourself." Faith looked expectantly at Xander while the crew gathered around, sensing ball-busting afoot.

Xander shrugged. "I dunno!" he exclaimed, waving a hand around aimlessly as he gathered his thoughts. "Um, maybe onions-"

"Vegetable."

"- mushrooms -"

"Vegetable."

"- peppers -"

"Vegetable." Faith was nearly sing-songing the word now.

"- olives -"

"Vegetable!" The entire crew chorused.

"Possible exception if you're Greek," Lou added.

"- pepperoni and sausage?"

Amid general derision, Tommy shook his head. "Nope, sorry Xander. If it grows from the ground, on a vine or on a tree, it's a vegetable, (not counting pineapples). Next thing you know, you'll be putting tofu and sprouts on a pizza. Christ." Tommy began to count off on his fingers. "Animal flesh, the byproducts thereof, or an unholy ground up combination of the two, must outnumber the amount of vegetables on a pizza around this house. If it didn't once have a face or come from something that used to have a face, then its population on the pizza must be very, very thin."

"You went generic this time, which was a good call," Lou added, "but it could have gone very, very badly if you'd sprung a pizza like that on us in the future. We're so chock full of cholesterol that an overdose of vegetation could very well kill at least half the god damn crew." He waggled a finger at Xander in mock-scolding.

Xander hung his head in faux-shame. "I understand. Only the best of stomach bricks for this firehouse."

"Now you're learning." Faith reached out to swat Xander on his hip.

As she made contact, ("Ow!" Xander complained.), the station alarms began to ring along with the automated, slightly feminine recorded message.

"_Engine. Ladder. Batallion,_" the voice warbled, over and over.

Tommy looked from Faith to Xander and then up at the nearest loudspeaker. "Huh. Cool. You should do that on days that we're slow, keep things from getting boring. C'mon, sweetheart. Time to see if your test scores mean a damn thing or not."

While Lou, Tommy and Faith all stole one more slice of pizza each, the firefighters all began to scramble for their bunker gear and piled onto the rig, the siren wailing before they even got out of the bay.

"There's nothing wrong with my pizza toppings," Xander complained petulantly to nobody in particular, as he went out into the truck bay to prep the oxygen tanks and other disposable or replaceable equipment for being switched out when the crew came back.


	5. Don't Let Me Burn

The entire crew, including (read: especially) Faith, was jittering with pent up energy waiting to be released as they blazed through the streets of Harlem to the call that they were answering. Tommy had just finished off the slice of pizza he'd swiped and sighed, patting his stomach contently. "As long as he doesn't go all vegan with it, Xander is allowed to order pizza for the house any damn time he wants to," he announced.

The rest of the crew murmured their agreement while Faith tipped her head back to fit the last of her own slice into her mouth, her cheek bulging as she worked on getting the last 'bite' down to a more manageable size.

When Faith merely nodded her own response, Tommy looked at her critically. "You gonna be alright?" he asked, indicating the comparatively large meal she'd just finished. "It usually takes a while to develop the iron stomach that the job requires."

"You've never grown up in south Boston," Faith retorted. "Eat what you can, when you can, and if there's problems later, that's what antacids are for."

"Good policy."

NYPD, for a wonder, already had the streets blocked from civilian traffic by the time that Ladder 62 arrived on the scene. Before the rig even came to a stop, the crew was already jumping out the doors and shouldering the oxygen tanks they were going to need. The building was seeping smoke from windows on the front and flames were flickering eerily in a few of the second floor windows.

"Battalion one-five to one-five alpha..." Chief Riley was already reporting on the situation to dispatch as they all got geared up.

Tommy got his helmet settled on his head. "Stay on my ass like white on rice on a paper plate with a glass of milk in a snowstorm. I tell you to go, you go, I tell you to get out, same deal," he instructed Faith as they got their halligans and axes situated.

"This ain't my first parade," Faith retorted, jabbing a thumb at Silletti. "He's the probie, not me."

"Still. He's got a few months in with us - we know neither jack nor shit about you, got it?" Tommy ended the conversation by irritably stomping toward the front entrance.

Faith snorted. "Well, ain't this a match made in Heaven?" Still, she flipped down the visor on her helmet and followed. If there was one thing drilled into her when she was still in Boston, it was following the lead of the senior guys on the crew.

The smoke began to get thicker as they made their way up to the second floor, filling the hallways with an eerie haze, offset by the flickering of smoldering fire, angrily fighting for enough oxygen to grow into a roaring blaze. Tommy and Faith went through the building, pausing at doors, rapping on them once and shouting at people to evacuate if they hadn't already.

Finally, the smoke and heat grew thick enough to indicate to Tommy that they were about to walk straight into The Shit, as firefighters are prone to calling a burning building. He began to pause at doors, pressing his heavily gloved hand, feeling for heat along the way before they cracked the door to check for fire and people.

They reached the doors toward the front of the building, and Tommy paused before opening this door, holding up a hand to Faith to indicate that she should ease back a little. He and Faith were greeted by a wall of heat and smoke as the door opened and Tommy hastily pulled the door closed for a second so that the two of them could crouch down on the floor, rip off their helmets, and pull on their shrouds and oxygen masks before proceeding.

The soft roar of crackling flames greeted them, coupled with billowing smoke ranging from white to gray to black, they picked their way through the rooms of the apartment, searching for unconscious or burned people. One of the doorways was partially collapsed, the frame from the top and the right side preventing any passage unless one paid the demanding price of fire and pain.Or was covered in heavy layers of fire-retardant gear.

Tommy hooked his halligan into an as yet unburned piece of wood and lifted slightly. "Go through, then .you do the same thing from the other side!"

Faith nodded and dropped down to her hands and knees while Tommy lifted the burning wood enough for her to squeeze through. And, incidentally, wondered how the baggy, shapeless firefighter pants could move the way Faith was making them move.

A fleeting thought, as Faith got on the other side and hooked her halligan the same way Tommy had. She had to remind herself that she was supposed to use two hands and throttle way back on the power she exerted, lest she break the wood and cause Tommy to be burned. Once he was through, they glanced around to get their bearings.

Faith held up her hand. "You hear that?" she asked, tilting her head. There was a faint sound of mixed crying and coughing. She and Tommy moved in the direction of the sound, coming to a closet where a tiny voice was weeping in despair.

Tommy eased the closet door open where they found a bedraggled little girl. "Hey sweetheart," Tommy greeted, trying to sound as non-threatening and cheerful as he could when covered by a breathing mask. "C'mon, we're going to get you out of here, okay?"

The little girl shook her head, clutching her soot-covered teddy bear for dear life. "No! I'm afraid of the fire!" she sobbed in terror.

"No, no," Tommy shook his head, still using that tone of voice that the crew rarely heard, except in situations like these. "We're firefighters, see?" He showed her the FDNY logo on his jacket. "The fire won't get you while we're here." It was, of course, a half-truth at best, but firefighting percentages wasn't something that he was bound to get into with the child.

Trembling, the girl held up her arms for Tommy to pick her up. "There y'go, sweetheart," he murmured soothingly, gathering her up. "You're gonna be okay." He glanced to Faith. "Go clear that doorway."

Faith nodded, moving ahead of Tommy and the child in his arms, racing to get the doorway cleared so the little girl couldn't see. And, since nobody was looking, she felt no compunction about flexing her Slayer strength a little and clearing the passage in record time. She was already putting a blanket over the slowly burning wood when Tommy and their rescue-ee came through. They hustled the little girl out of the apartment and down the stairs.

As they reached the base of the stairs to the first floor, they heard another cry of dismay or anguish, this time from further down the stairs in the basement. Tommy and Faith exchanged a glance. "Can you get that, or do you want to wait for someone?"

"Go, I got it!" She waved Tommy off; since his arms were already full.

"I'll come back or send one of the guys!" he called as she bustled down the stairs into the basement. Tommy likewise hustled out to the front of the building, to hand the child off to one of the EMT's.

As she came into the basement, where the smoke was thinner, she came across a larger man holding another man up by his collar and shaking him roughly. "_Get me out of here_!" the being growled, a bit too bestially.

Faith ripped her oxygen mask off. "Hey! Let 'im go!" she called.

The being turned, and unless this was an unusually aggressive Star Trek fan cosplaying as a Klingon, she had found a vampire. Faith wasted no time in hurling her halligan across the room at the vampire's legs. The spike end of the halligan caught the vampire behind the knee and he howled in pain as he dropped the man to the floor.

Faith had made her way across the room at this point, pulling a stake from one of the previously non-existent pockets in her bunker jacket (before Xander got a hold of it), "Today's not your day, vamp," Faith announced. "You got fire up above, sunlight outside and a Slayer in the room."

The vampire's eyes bulged in fear. He glanced around in a moment of panic before his shoulders slumped. The yellow eyes closed as he pulled his shirt open. "Do it. Don't let me burn, Slayer," the vampire pleaded, abruptly calm. The fastest progression of the five stages of coping with death ever.

Faith shrugged. "Sorry man. First time I ever did this as a favor." She lunged and stooped quickly to rescue her halligan from falling to ash with the rest of the vampire, and turned to fetch her helmet and mask. Then she scooped up the unconscious man in the traditional 'fireman's carry' and began to make her way up the stairs.


	6. Interlude - Graduation

After the class of probationary Boston firefighters completed their graduation, they indulged in the expected celebratory hooting and hollering before they peeled away in ones and twos to go see the family and friends that came to watch the ceremony.

"Dear sweet spinning Jeebus in a basket of figs," Xander announced as their own graduate came within earshot. "Faith in a uniform-thing. He'p me, lord." He fanned at himself as if fatigued.

"Xander, I am gonna haul you down to the ice cream store and feed you 96 flavors of Shut The Hell Up." Faith scowled darkly. She had known this was coming. If she could have skipped out on the ceremony, she would have.

"Behave," Buffy admonished, giving Xander's arm a swat and reaching out to fuss with Faith's lapels. "It looks nice. Very professional and firefight-y. Congratulations, Faith."

"Thanks, B." Faith got a slight glint in her eye. "Besides, this ain't the outfit for that kinda thing. Now, lemme go get my bunker gear, _then_ you can-"

"Lalala! Not listening!" Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and put her fingers in her ears.

Giles made a visible effort to erase the last several sentences from his memory. "Well done, Faith. But, was it really necessary to set new physical training records in the process?"

Faith shrugged. "I wasn't going to, but I got to the point where I felt like they could see me holding back. 'Sides, you should've seen the looks on that big guy's face over there," she pointed, "when I passed him in the ladder climb."

"Ladder climb? This is an actual event?" Xander blinked, envisioning people shimmying up and down ladders in some sort of strange relay race.

"Come down a ladder in full gear while carrying a two hundred pound dummy," Faith replied. "They wanted me to use the girl dummy, but I made 'em give me the same test the guys took."

"That would probably be more impressive if we didn't already know you can bench press a Volvo. Or do arm curls with Giles' old Citroen." Xander grinned, then pretended to look abashed at the withering look he received from Giles.

"Oh, don't look like that, Giles." Buffy shook her head. "Do you know how many times I came _this_ close to kicking a hole in the floorboards, just so I could pull a Flinstone and possibly get that thing up to the speed limit?"

"Guys, shh." Xander spotted an approaching firefighter - judging by the decorations on his chest, not one of the newly graduated ones.

The solidly built firefighter, with short sandy hair and a slightly pockmarked face came walking up to Faith. "Excuse me, Faith Lehane?"

"Just Faith," she corrected automatically; for as long as the Scoobies had known her, she hadn't ever claimed her last name more than she absolutely had to.

"Good enough then." The man smiled pleasantly. He'd never be pretty, but he had one of those faces that was open and honest. "I'm Peter Riley. I'm on the crew that you're going to be assigned to."

Faith looked puzzled. "I thought they didn't tell us that stuff for a few days after graduation."

"No, but they do tell the crews who they're getting," Peter clarified. "I came over to introduce myself, that sort of thing."

"Really?" Faith blinked, not having encountered much civility from the male of the firefighting species since she began training at the Academy.

Peter nodded. "Really. And, I came to give you a little help, if you don't mind." At Faith's shaking of her head indicating that she didn't mind, he continued. "Well, it's like this. Probies always get a bit of static during their first year. It's kind of a hazing process, but it's also for seeing how well you take it. That way, they know you can handle yourself and watch their backs as well, when it really counts."

"I heard stories." Faith shrugged. "There's nothing they can dish out that I can't take."

"Given your scores on the physicals, I don't doubt that. They're likely to give you a bit more of a hard time with you being female and all," Peter cautioned.

"Already been dealing with that from these guys for weeks." She waved her hand at the graduate probies milling about. "They got nothin' for me that I haven't already seen."

Peter smiled encouragingly. "That's the spirit. And if any of it gets to be too much, you can come and talk to me if you need to, okay?"

"Yeah? What makes you any different from them, other than coming and havin' this talk with me?" Faith challenged.

"Let's just say I've seen my share of flak as well." Peter gave her a serious look, then glanced around until his eyes landed on Xander. He gave Xander a brief look up and down, much like a guy would do when checking out a pretty girl.

Faith got a slow smile on her face. "Gotcha. I appreciate it. Don't know that I'll need the help, but thanks for offering."

"You're very welcome." Peter offered his hand to Faith. "Well then. Congratulations and I hope to see you at the firehouse soon. Thanks for your time." He looked at Buffy, Giles and Xander. "I'm sorry for interrupting your celebration with your friend. Welcome to Boston, and I hope you have fun." He tipped the brim of his hat to the group of them at large, turned and walked away.

"Well, that was terribly kind of him," Giles offered.

"We'll see," Faith shrugged, though she was still clearly amused. "They tell horror stories at the Academy about the hazing and shit that veteran firefighters do to probies. But I think he was on the up and up. Especially with Xander hangin' around."

"Wait, what?" Xander blinked. "What'd I have to do with anything?"

"You mean you didn't catch the elevator eyes he was throwin' you there at the end?" Faith waggled her brows suggestively.

"You mean he's-"

"_Ping... ping... ping..._" Faith made noises like a radar that was scanning a blip.

Buffy rolled her eyes and linked her arms with Xander and Giles. "Come on, you player you. Let's go take our probie out to celebrate." She paused as they all began to walk and asked, "Did I use that right? 'Probie' is such a funny word."

Perhaps Peter's promise was true, perhaps it wasn't. But for the first time, Faith felt like she'd done something on her own, something that didn't rest solely on her enhanced ability to kill the denizens of the dark. And that felt pretty damned good.


	7. Keep It Up

By the time Ladder 62 returned to the station for the evening, the crew had been to the one fire, two rescues, one false alarm and back-up support for a car accident.

They slid wearily from the rig a couple of hours after sundown, still slightly covered in soot from the fire and definitely low on energy after the busy day. They began to drag their assorted gear to the hooks and lockers.

"Another day, another dollar," Tommy grunted.

"Before taxes or after?" Lou wanted to know.

"Oh, before, naturally. Gotta give the state and Uncle Sam a chance to prune that down to fifteen cents."

"Shit, you guys are getting paid?" Franco hooked his helmet and bunker jacket on their assigned hooks before letting fly with a mighty stretch and yawn.

"At least you mugs get paid overtime." Chief Riley had always hated being put on salary.

"Pay or no pay, you guys work too damn hard." Faith rubbed at her eyes, even though the weariness was only half genuine. "And I can handle the work, even. But all the New York traffic? Friggin' insane."

"Yeah, in a city where parking is designed for cars the size of my foot, the rig isn't the most maneuverable thing on the road." Franco shook his head.

"Oh come on, Franco. You end up driving the suburban most of the time." Garrity seemed vaguely offended by this.

"That's because after letting you clowns drive, I decided I wanted to live to see retirement and put Franco on permanent suburban duty," Riley provided. "C'mon guys, enough screwin' around. Go get cleaned up and get outta here. I don't want to have to hear about your overtime from Perolli." That was the chief of the fire station as a whole.

"Hey, before you assholes run off and get to drinking or partying all night, don't forget, we've got a garage to build this weekend," Lou called to the crew at large. "And if you can, find one more guy who knows his ass from his elbow when it comes to construction. We can't just stick the probie with this one."

"Thanks Lou," Silletti grumbled.

"Ask Xander," Faith suggested offhandedly as she peeled out of her own protective gear. "He was in construction for five-odd years before his accident. Still does carpentry off and on just to keep his hand in."

"Yeah? If you see him before I do, tell him to talk to me." Lou brightened. Maybe this 'woman in the crew' stuff wasn't going to be such a bad deal after all.

"Hey, that reminds me Chief," Faith piped up, fishing her biker jacket out of her locker. "I'm gonna need a little girl's room. The bathroom part I can deal with, 'cause the stalls have doors. But these guys aren't going to get _anything_ done if I have to shower with 'em."

Riley gave Faith a long, considering look. "Yeah, guess you're right. I don't want to head for the showers to find the crew having a circle jerk."

"It'd be more of a pentagon jerk. Which, come to think of it, isn't any different." Lou scratched his sooty chin and shrugged, heading off for the showers.

"Thanks Chief." Faith zipped up her jacket and began to walk towards the bay doors.

"Hey, kid."

"Yeah Chief?" Faith paused and turned partially around.

"Not bad work today. You keep it up, the guys won't care if you're a girl or not, unless you wear a low cut top, then all bets are off."

One of Faith's dimples appeared briefly. "I know. But thanks for sayin'." With that, she exited the firehouse and headed for her bike.

Time to clock in for her other job.


	8. After-Action Report

Xander sat up from his sofa slouch when the door to the townhouse slammed shut. "Ah, the call of the not-a-Watcher!"

"Call, schmall. I'm takin' a shower first," Faith called back, flinging her leather jacket without looking as it draped over Xander's head.

"Since when was your leather jacket cured smokehouse style?"

"Oh, he's funny. We gotta write you some new material, Xander." The sounds of assorted clothing hitting the bathroom floor occurred, followed by about five minutes of vigorous shower spray.

"Hey, this is my A material!" he called. Meanwhile, Xander padded through the house and fished out a journal, his laptop, enough sandwich to choke a medium sized animal and two beers. By the time he was done arranging these things on the coffee table in front of the sofa, Faith was coming out of the bathroom in comfy sleepwear, (a well worn t-shirt stolen from Xander and pajama pants), toweling her hair dry.

She fussed with the ends of her hair for a few moments more before setting the towel aside and running a brush through her hair while Xander waited patiently, elbows propping his body up as he sat on the sofa. Finally, order was restored as much as could be to her slightly unruly hair, and she glanced down at Xander. "You ready?"

At Xander's nod, she sat down on the other end of the sofa and picked up her beer bottle. Xander did likewise and they tapped the necks of the bottles together before draining a third of the bottle in one guzzle. They sat the bottles down again and Xander clicked on a function in the laptop, angling the keyboard toward Faith. "After action report, go," he murmured.

Faith began to outline the demons that she had added to the body count, starting with the vampire in the fire during the day. In her own colorful, occasionally profane way, she recounted her battles for the audio recorder that Xander had running on the laptop, with Xander occasionally jogging her memory with clarifying questions.

Once she wound down, Xander asked in tones that were ritualistic, "Can you think of anything else?"

"No, no I can't," she replied, just as formally.

Xander recited the date and time of report into the built in microphone of the laptop and reached out to do more pointing and clicking until the recorder was turned off. Faith folded her arms and gave him an impatient look. He looked at her with seeming innocence until her look started to turn into a glare. Only then did he finally relent and leaned back with his arms on the back and side of the sofa.

"Took you long enough," Faith complained, turning and leaning back against Xander, tucking her feet up beside her. "What's the deal with the journal, anyhow?"

"It's my new strategy. I take the recording and rewrite it in the diary for Giles," Xander explained, waving his hand at the as-yet-untouched journal.

"Why? I thought the recordings were good enough?" Faith looked curious as she leaned forward briefly to retrieve their beers, handing one of them back to Xander.

"Oh, they are. But what fun is that? Can you imagine Watchers two hundred years from now trying to read _my_ handwriting? They'd have to have an entire team devoted to a Xander-to-English translation!" Xander chortled in satisfaction as he curled an arm around Faith's waist.

"So basically, you're doing this to make Giles' precision-loving soul scream in pain?"

"Pretty much!"

"Knew there was a reason I liked you." Faith twisted in Xander's arms to present him with a firm kiss on the lips.

"There had to be at least one. So what was with the vampire in the basement thing?" Xander reached out to retrieve the mega-sandwich from the table and offered the first bite to Faith, which she accepted before replying.

"Mmf. I think he was just crashing for the day. Then the fire happened, and he had nowhere else to go without causing a bigger problem for himself." She licked a spot of dressing from the corner of her mouth. "You put something new in that?"

"It's a chipotle something-or-other. Figured I'd try something new. Man, that's gotta be a worst case scenario for a vampire. Fire in a building during the day, no sewer access, and then the Slayer comes a-knocking? That's worse than getting audited by the IRS when you work a graveyard shift." He shook his head and took his own bite of the sandwich.

"Yeah, almost felt sorry for him. Then he dusted and everything was cool again." Faith blinked and added, "Lou wants to talk to you tomorrow. Something about needing another pair of hands for building a garage."

"Non-Sequiters R' Us – we may not make much sense, but we sure like pizza." He blinked down at her. "Did you rat me out to the crew about my mad carpentry skillz?"

"Betcher ass I did. You think I'm going to be any good at construction?"

Not if Buffy is any indicator, Xander thought. But did not say aloud. He was fond of his limbs in their current assembly. "Fair enough. Any extraneous static from the guys today?"

"Only the usual, 'Oh no, a girl!' riff. After the first grab, they throttled it back some. Also, if you want another side job, I asked the Chief about getting me a little Slayer's room for myself."

"Nice. I'll ask him about that tomorrow too. That way, I can do _all_ the setup." Xander set the food down so he could steeple his fingers and look very Monty Burns-esque. "Eeeexcellent."

"Do I even want to know?" Faith arched an eyebrow at him.

"Probably not. No signs of the thing that Giles told us about yet?"

"Nope," Faith replied around the last mouthful of sandwich. "We about done with all this 'how was your day, honey?' crap?"

"Well, you didn't ask me how _my_ day was, but it's a start."

"Good." Faith twisted around in Xander's hold and swung one leg around to straddle his lap, a smoky look in her eyes. "Because I know how the rest of your night is about to be spent."

"I must be the best not-a-Watcher ev-mmph." Anything else that Xander was about to say was muffled by Faith's lips, and since Xander had always grown up being told not to talk with his mouth full, he turned his attention to hotter matters occurring in his lap.


	9. Interlude - Probie

"This sucks," Faith grumbled to nobody in particular as she stood in front of the rig with a plastic tub full of cleaning supplies. As it turned out, except for some really dumb practical jokes, (which were sometimes actually funny), the bulk of probie hazing consisted of doing all the grunt work around the firehouse. This included things like washing the fire truck to which she was assigned.

There was a bright side, however. She'd already known that doing simple physical labor gave you time to get some thinking done. Or if you had nothing in particular on your mind, it let you do a whole lot of not-thinking.

Of course, washing a fire truck wasn't a simple hour long affair. This was a project in and of itself. There was climbing and use of this long, mop-like implement. Faith had decided to adopt a 'from the top down' policy in the washing, and had finally worked her way around to the grill, bumpers and assorted chrome bits.

She was leaning over polishing the grill when a voice rang out from behind her, "Hey, I think I saw this once in an issue of _Playboy_."

Faith glared over her shoulder to discover Xander standing there in one of his customary plaid shirts and jeans. "What're you doing here?"

"Didn't Giles call you?" Xander tilted his head.

Faith straightened from her cleaning; it was one of _those_ visits, apparently. "Not since I came on shift. I leave my cell in my locker so I don't break it."

"Ah. Well, he got your message about how you felt like you were all settled in and wanted to start patrolling the wilds of Boston, so he went looking for a field Watcher for you. Only those are spread pretty thin." Xander let that last sentence out a bit hesitantly.

"Translation: They're scared of me," Faith supplied.

"Not so much that, as they're scared they're gonna look like bad Watchers if they get assigned to you and something goes wrong," he clarified.

"So, what, they sent you to break the news to me?"

"Actually, they sent me to give you a hand." Xander shrugged.

Faith folded up the cloth she'd been doing her polishing with. "I thought you didn't want to be a Watcher."

"I don't. I'm not a Watcher." Xander shook his head firmly and lowered his voice. "But I know this gig is too much for one person, even a Slayer. And we've got a whole pile of Slayers now, so that 'one girl against the forces of darkness' schtick is over. So, I'm here to help, however you need."

"What about research stuff?"

"Got Giles and Dawn on speed dial. We need mojo, Willow said I could call her. I got it covered." He grinned in that oddly disarming way he had.

Faith's brow furrowed. "Why're you doing this? You don't owe me nothin'."

Xander shrugged. "Needs doing. And I was getting bored in London. I'm getting set up in a house about three miles from here. You're welcome to move into one of the rooms, if you want to save your money. Giles let me use a Council expense account. Call me when you're done with your shift, let me know what you're in the mood to eat. We'll make a thing out of it." He gave a half-wave and tucked his hands into his pockets again, shuffling off to wherever it was that he'd parked.

Faith simply stared after him, stunned by what had just happened. She was startled out of her reverie by Peter looking around out front of the firehouse. "Hey, was that my eye candy from your graduation?"

She jumped slightly before turning and snorting at Peter. "Yeah, it was. He stopped by to let me know he was going to be in the neighborhood for a while."

"Yeah? Just for that, I'll help you finish off the rig." True to his word, Peter fished the glass cleaner out of the plastic tote and began working on the windows and mirrors.

_I am having the weirdest day_, Faith thought to herself with a confused smile, before resuming her own cleaning work.


	10. If You're Good

"Y'know, every firehouse should come equipped with a carpenter or construction worker volunteer," Lou boomed cheerfully as the crew, minus the Probie, settled into lawn chairs around a newly constructed garage. "I mean, who knew you could get everything all organized before you slap it together?"

Xander shook his head as he was prodded to sit down in a lawn chair. "Nah, I've just done it so many times that it's second nature."

"And yet you still have time to volunteer at a firehouse? Man, I gotta get you to sell me your time management secrets." Tommy snorted and began fishing drinks from the cooler. Water for himself, beer for the rest of the crew.

"I think the first rule is to not have kids." Xander offered.

"Well, scratch that, then."

"Hey guys." Faith came around the corner of the garage. She was greeted by a round of murmured 'hello's.

"I thought you didn't have any interest in doing any construction?" Lou asked, eying her strangely.

"I don't. You know how people sometimes buy a fish tank so that their cats have something to watch, like cat TV? It's kinda like that." Faith sat down on the grass next to Xander, who silently opened and passed her one of the beers being sent around. "Except it looks like there's a commercial break and we're getting an ad for Probie jeans."

"Blame Xander. He's the one that got us all efficient n' shit." Franco pointed with his beer bottle at the culprit.

"I usually do." Faith tilted her chin at the Probie. "So what's the deal? How come all of you ain't in on the fun?"

"Oh, we're down to the painting and cleaning part," Garrity supplied.

"Ah, the probie work. Sucks to be you, Mikey!" Faith moved over to the cooler and filched one of the beers, cracking it open and putting it somewhere that Silletti could get to it, without potentially getting it splattered with paint or accidentally tipping it over.

"You mean you're not a-"

"Nope. Finished my probie year a couple months before I moved to New York." Faith paused and pointed. "Missed a spot."

Silletti grumbled and went back to fix his mistake. Tommy, meanwhile, had been looking at Xander with a thoughtful expression. "Y'know, if we can get together on stuff like this more often, with Xander there as the ringer, we'd have a waiting list of people wanting us to do repairs and add-ons. Less time spent, same amount of money." Tommy let that thought linger in the minds of the crew for a bit.

"Shouldn't you, y'know, discuss this with said ringer first?" Xander noted.

"Hell, I'll do everything but kidnap you to get you to go along with this," Lou announced. "And I do mean everything." This was added with a coquettish look.

"I think your mustache would kinda tickle, Lou."

Faith snorted as the rest of the guys chuckled. "Well, now that the entertainment has gone to _that_ level, I think I've had enough girl TV for today. Thanks for the beer, guys." She used Xander's knee for a solid surface on which to leverage herself to her feet and made her way back to where she left her bike.

The crew collectively watched Faith saunter away. "It's a good thing more chick firefighters don't look like that, or we'd never get a god damn thing done." Franco observed.

Amid a general murmur of agreement, Lou decided to play devil's advocate. "Well, there's still that whole thing of whether or not she can do the job."

"She made a grab her first day, no assistance needed." Tommy pointed out. "I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't give a rat's ass who they put on the crew, so long as they can do the job up to the same standards we were tested under."

"Mm, I think she can pull that off." Xander smiled slightly.

Tommy's eyes narrowed as he studied Xander for a few moments. "You're bangin' her, aren't you?"

From somewhere behind the garage, Faith's voice rang out distantly, "Say it loud, say it proud, Xan!"

"Christ. What is she, part bat?" Garrity looked slightly spooked at Faith's sense of hearing.

"A really sexy bat?" Silletti paused in his painting, and promptly went back to it when he found the rest of the crew staring at him in dumbfounded horror.

Franco returned to the question on the table. "So, is Tommy right, bro?" he asked Xander.

"Are we having this conversation? Seriously?" Xander shook his head. "I've died and gone back to high school. Except the people asking about my sex life aren't _total_ douchebags."

Lou pointed at Xander and nodded his head vigorously. "Yep, he's sleeping with her."

"That doesn't bug you, Xander? I mean, the girl you're seeing being a firefighter and all?" Garrity asked.

Xander looked mystified. "Why would it?"

"I don't know about any of these guys, but to me it'd feel like kind of a role reversal. Y'know?" Garrity looked around at the others for validation.

And received blank stares in return. "No, I don't. What do you mean, Sean?" Tommy asked, one eye narrowing a touch as he sensed potential mayhem afoot.

Garrity rolled his eyes. "You know! Like, she'd be the man in the relationship or something."

Xander barked out a laugh. "You _have_ seen her in a tank top, right?"

"Yeah, but-!"

"I think in his own 'special' way, he's asking if you feel slightly emasculated by being in a relationship with a woman that's chosen a profession that's performed by men, by and large." Lou translated.

"You guys do remember I'm still in construction, right? Besides, there's certain jobs that I'm kinda no longer qualified for." Xander absently scratched under his eye patch. "Look. I don't _care_ what job she does. She takes care of herself, I take care of myself, and at the end of the day, I get to curl up with someone that's hotter than a missile silo full of hot things."

"You gotta admit guys, there's no denying that she's blazing," Franco stated.

"I think we're all agreed that she's sex on a stick." Tommy held a hand up, followed shortly by the rest of the crew. "I think what's on the table here, is they want to know how in the hell you wound up with her."

"That, gentlemen, is a story for the ages. And maybe I'll tell you some day. If you're good." Xander smiled serenely under the barrage of complaint that statement provoked. What he wouldn't give to plunk this bunch down in Slayer central and let them try to wave the testosterone bat around. That would be the funniest thirty seconds ever.


	11. Don't Ruin My Fun

Chief Riley paused outside of the bathroom that Xander was putting the finishing touches on. "You're starting to worry me with that evil laughter, kid. I've never heard someone have that much fun in a bathroom without a _Playboy_ magazine and a bottle of hand lotion."

Xander peered over his shoulder with a broad grin. "Don't spoil my entertainment," he admonished as he finished sweeping up the assorted dust that comes along with new room construction.

"Far be it from me to prevent you from enjoying your alone time with your inner interior decorator, but it sounds like supper is about ready." Indeed, there were voices audible from the kitchen, clamoring for a respite from the tantalizing smells they'd been enduring for hours now.

"Ah, yes. Faith's day to make lunch. Can't miss that." Xander hurriedly finished the last bits of tidying and glanced around with a satisfied look on his face before turning off the light for the bathroom/shower room that had been installed for Faith's benefit.

As Xander made his way into the kitchen, Garrity was yelping as he was caught trying to snitch a bite of the food Faith had laid out and received a spatula on his forehead for his trouble.

"Alright, you guys, I'm only gonna say this once," Faith's voice cut through the playful grumbling. "This is a taco bar. Hot food's in the crock pots, cold stuff is on the counter next to the fridge, hot sauce is over by the coffee maker. Use the sauce with the red lid at your own risk."

"You east coast sissies," Xander added. "The facemelter sauce is not for the faint of tongue."

"I ain't scared," Franco brought his hands up in the 'bring it' gesture. "It's not like Puerto Ricans forgot how to make spicy food."

"One thing, tho'." Lou paused the proceedings to move the hot sauce over to an empty stretch of countertop away from the coffee maker. When he got a room full of confused looks, he explained, "Because I don't want one of you assholes getting the bright idea to spice up the coffee."

"Well, there went that idea," Garrity sighed in resignation.

"Once we're done, put the cold stuff away; leave some for the other crews," Chief Riley added. "Faith, you made enough here to feed a small army."

"Only time I make it is when I'm feeding a small army, so that works out." Faith and Xander exchanged a sly look. They knew very well that the only places Faith would have had cause to make her taco bar meal is in a large cluster of Slayers, or back at the 'California School for Girls'.

After a glance around to ensure there were no other questions or misconceptions, Faith stepped out of the way of the crock pots and waved her hand in invitation. "Have at it, guys." The usual free-for-all when particularly good food was afoot was underway.

Once the jockeying for position and food had subsided, there was only the sounds of firefighters eating contently. Or in some cases, uncomfortably.

"Hot, hot, hot!" Silletti fanned at his mouth.

"Told you to go easy on the ultra hot sauce." Xander shook his head without sympathy.

"I wanted to try it!" Silletti protested.

Franco reached over to swat the back of Silletti's head in a 'brainduster'. "Then you try a dab or two of it, numb-nuts. You don't drown your food in it."

Xander glanced to Chief Riley and nodded very slightly, before standing up. "Okay, before I lapse into carb-coma, I'm going to go check on the air tanks." He was given a general murmur from the group as he walked out to the truck bay.

"Oh, Faith," Riley piped in. "Xander forgot to tell you, he finished your bathroom up."

"He did? Cool." She looked a little bemused at Xander's attention span, but hopped up to go check out her new facilities.

A few seconds later, a bellow of rage sounded from down the hallway, "_Xander, you're a dead man_!"

The crew exchanged very confused looks, but before they could get up to see what the ruckus was about, Xander came tearing back through the kitchen, Faith hot on his heels. "I bequeath all of my tools to the firehouse!" he managed to gasp to them while somehow snickering madly all the while. The crew jumped up as the two sped from the room and moved to see what the ruckus _du jour_ was.

He ran into the rec room where Faith caught up to him and shoulder checked Xander into the sofa, whereupon she promptly jumped on top of him while clobbering him with one of the couch cushions.

"I regret nothing!" Xander managed to shout between blows, as the crew leaned into the doorway to see just what had gotten into them.

Chief Riley looked at the rest of the crew and waved them back down to the opposite end of the kitchen, to go see what had happened. He got to the new bathroom that had been made for Faith and let them all have a look.

"I don't get it." Lou shook his head. "It looks like a regular woman's bathroom to me."

And indeed, there were colors of assorted pastels, flowery curtains and towels, air fresheners, all of which wouldn't have looked out of place in a bathroom decorated by Mrs. Riley or Tommy's soon-to-be-ex.

"Well, at least the kid seemed to be amused by it." Chief Riley shook his head. Their two new additions were definately a wierd pair.

From the rec room, Xander could be heard shouting, "I give! The real decorations are under the sink!"


	12. Interlude - The Good Times

Faith and Peter sat in a corner booth at one of a million Irish pubs, this one located not too far from the firehouse. This pub was at least trying harder than most. There were Irish rugby and football posters and jerseys everywhere, along with the standard Guinness, Harp, Bushmills and other alcohol related ads.

"You remembered to invite my eye candy, right?" Peter nudged Faith playfully with his elbow.

"Y'know he doesn't play for your team, right?" Faith was amused at Peter's recurring desire to ogle Xander.

"I know! But he's been a sport about it so far, rather than taking the 'scared straight' route and fleeing the room every time he sees me." Peter grinned and waved a server over to place an order, with a whispered side request. "Besides, it's fun. All of the flirting with none of the risk."

"I thought the risk _was_ part of the fun," Faith noted.

"You have your fun, I'll have mine. Hey, who's this friend he's bringing?"

Faith shrugged. "Guy he works with sometimes." Xander had taken on some side jobs with carpentry involved. He couldn't get into heavy construction, but home construction was more carpentry than anything and he wasn't a danger to himself or anyone else on those jobs.

"Kind of weird to be inviting a total stranger to a celebration for a friend, isn't it?" Peter asked.

"According to Xander, the cause for the celebration required more fuss than three people could provide." Faith smiled wryly. "What goes on in his head sometimes, I'll never know."

"Well, now we can find out," Peter murmured, tipping his chin towards the doorway. Xander had just entered the bar with a tall, dark haired gent in tow. Peter waited until Xander spotted them and came over to the table before announcing, "There's my big, strong carpenter muffin."

Xander waved his hand dismissively. "Bah. You only love me for my mind." He flopped bonelessly next to Faith, leaving his friend to take a seat next to Peter. "Guys, this is Steven. He's a plumber, been doing the pipework on some of the jobs I've been on recently. Steven, this is Peter and Faith."

Steven smiled amiably and offered his hand to each of them. "Nice to meet you. Xander tells me you're both firefighters?"

Peter nodded. "That's right. And we're here today to celebrate my probie here making her first grab. Her first rescue, I mean."

Faith and Xander exchanged a look of mutual understanding. They both knew that Peter's statement wasn't exactly correct. It was just Faith's first rescue where firefighting was concerned.

"That's a pretty brave career choice. You don't find many female firefighters." Steven noted approvingly. "Good for you."

Faith shrugged, knowing that she'd had something of an unfair advantage at the Academy. "Kinda just stumbled into it."

"Born into it, you mean. Don't think I don't know what your exam scores were, young lady." Peter waggled an admonishing finger at her. "Top of her class, this one. Now, for the proper celebration, we need - ah, here it is!" He waved at one of the servers as she approached with the order that Peter had placed earlier.

The server placed four pints of a dark beer that was obviously Guinness, along with four shot glasses and a bottle of Bushmills. Once Peter arranged to set up a running tab for the evening and the server was gone again, he explained. "Now, the rules are, the first and last drinks of the night have to be Guinness. Once an hour, we each have a shot from this bottle. Yes, my Irish is showing. Deal with it. Any questions?"

Xander raised his hand. "With a rule like that, I suspect we're going to want to just leave our wheels here and cab home, those of us that drove."

"Excellent point. We will be drinking tonight, boys and girl, make sure you have your grown-up pants on. This includes not wrapping your vehicle around a telephone pole." Peter glanced around to ensure there were no dissenters. "Anything else?"

The assembled celebrants all shook their heads. Peter picked up his pint and held it aloft. "Gentlemen, to the finest female firefighter I've ever had the privilege to teach the job to." He, Peter and Xander all reached out to tap their glasses against Faiths, who was shuffling uncomfortably.

"Yeah, whatever. Less talkin', more drinkin'." Faith let them complete the toast before tilting her head back to drain the pint glass.

Once that was over, they repeated the process over the shots of Bushmills and the party was started. It was, in Faith's opinion, the least stressful drunk she'd ever had. She was hanging out with two guys that she knew and trusted to one degree or another, and the third was being a perfect gentleman in his own fashion, so there was no worry there either. She didn't have to worry about stepping on someones toes or watch her language. She could just be Faith and nobody was going to give her any kind of disapproving look for it.

The four of them played darts and pool, Xander losing spectacularly and blasphemously at both, although he redeemed himself at the Golden Tee golf game. There was no dance floor, per se, but this didn't prevent Faith from loading the jukebox full of song requests and dragging each of them out for a couple of dances apiece, with Faith moving like a dervish and the boys just trying to keep up with her.

During a lull in the festivities, when their server was not anywhere to be found and it was at least thirty minutes longer before the next shot, Xander lurched to his feet. "Forget it. I'll get the next round," he announced muzzily. "Faith, gimmie a hand? I'm not too confident in my balance anymore."

Faith nodded and slid out of the booth as well, leaving Peter and Steven behind. Xander led the way to the bar and placed the drink orders, then turned around and placed a hand on Faith's shoulder encouraging her to do the same. "Check it out," he murmured.

She turned and looked where Xander had indicated, and saw Peter and Steven talking animatedly in their absence. And, she noted further with more than a little amusement, their hands were touching very slightly.

Faith looked back at Xander in dawning realization. "You mean Steven is-"

"Gay as a french horn, yep." He nodded in satisfaction. "It just kinda came out, so to speak, when we were working on a two story in that new housing development. He's new in town, only a few months anyhow, figured he could stand to meet some people. Plus, there was kind of a vibe, like I used to get off Larry back in high school."

"Which one was he?" Faith couldn't remember off hand.

"The football guy. He was convinced I was gay, but he never did anything about it that I knew of."

Faith vaguely remembered now. "Oh, yeah. Damn, and I'd thought about makin' a move on him, too. So, what? You brought Steven along just to see what would happen with Peter?"

Xander shrugged. "Figured it couldn't hurt. Steven's a regular guy, a lot like Peter. He likes baseball and other sports, he's a plumber, he drives a truck. He just, y'know..." Xander was unable to find a sufficiently descriptive phrase. "Help me out here."

"Likes cock," Faith supplied.

"That's the one. And when he and Peter started talking, it kind of reminded me of when Willow and Tara were first starting to gravitate toward each other. Seemed like it'd be worth a shot." He paused for a moment. "Did you ever meet Tara?"

"Kinda. It was after I got out of the coma."

Xander's brow furrowed in thought. "Oh, the body swap thing. Gotcha." He dropped it, knowing that Faith hated being forced to think about those days unless she was actively getting her redemption on.

Their drinks were finally made and served. Xander and Faith each took two apiece and began to make their way back to the bar.

"Oh God." Xander paused.

"What?"

"We just set up a firefigher and a plumber to possibly start seeing each other." Xander was trying to control his expression.

"Yeah, so?"

"We've single-handedly created the most clichéd gay porn ever."


	13. A Hurdle

One thing Faith could say about the business of fighting fires - there was rarely any time to get bored when you worked in a major population center. The crew of 62 truck commonly went on four or five calls at a stretch before any lulls in the action occurred. And there were even times when they left the firehouse shortly after the tour started, and didn't come back until the sun was no longer in the sky.

And so it was again. It seemed like every third building in New York had bad wiring or a gas leak or whatever catalyst was going to trigger a fire or necessitate a rescue that particular day. Faith was paired off with Lou as they were looking for people and overlooked fires while other crews were working on the bigger issue upstairs.

It was amazing to Faith just how fast a building could fill with smoke. Even with the primary fire a few floors up, the lower levels were still harder to see through than fog rolling in off a bay or a lake. Faith and Lou paused to get their air masks situated before proceeding onward. They reached one multi-room apartment and Lou signaled for her to take one end of the unit while he checked the opposite side.

Faith went through each room methodically, just as she'd been trained to do. Clear one room, check inside of any opening that could hold a man, woman, child or animal and move on. She was in something she determined to be a master bedroom and resumed the process. Under the bed, nothing. In the half-bath, nothing.

She pushed open the sliding door to the small walk-in closet and found a woman and child huddled on the floor, unconscious. The woman had apparently been the last to succumb to the smoke inhalation, because she'd had the time and (slightly misguided) presence of mind to wet a cloth and put it over the child's mouth. Misguided because she'd have been better off trying to get herself and her child to an area of the apartment where they would have been found quicker.

Happily, Lou was in the other room, so Faith could use her abilities to their fullest extent.Faith carefully slung the woman over her shoulder and hoisted the child in her other arm, and began to make her way back to the entrance.

"Lou, I got two, one adult, one child. You okay?" she called.

"Yeah, almost done!" Lou called back.

Their radios came to life just as Faith was heading for the open front door to the apartment. "All units, all units, the floor on the level 7 is not stable, repeat the fl-- LOOK OUT!" Abruptly, the ceiling crumpled as a support beam came crashing through, cutting Faith off from Lou as it blocked off the other exit from the living room. Flames began to spread

"Lou!" Faith shouted, briefly hesitant since she had two arms full of people.

She didn't get a shouted response, or she couldn't hear it over the roar of the flames from above, but she did hear the sound of Lou's rescue beacon starting to chirp.

Boots came thundering up the stairs, Garrity and Silletti checking since they had last seen Faith and Lou checking the floor they were on now. "You guys okay?" Garrity asked.

Faith pointed at the collapsed ceiling. "Lou's stuck behind there. Take these two." She unloaded the woman and child off on Garrity and Silletti. "I'm gonna see if he's alright."

"We'll be back with the rest of the guys in a minute!" Garrity acknowledged, he and the Probie hustling down the stairs as fast as they safely could.

Faith turned back to the debris and began trying to determine if there was a way around. "Lou, are you hurt?" she shouted.

"No, just stuck!" he called back, faintly. Other ears may not have been able to hear it.

She was glad he didn't get hurt or burned, but she wasn't going to be able to unleash her full ability on the wreckage of the upper floor. Faith glanced around and spotted the broken remains of a coffee table. "I'm gonna try to lever this beam up! If you can, get under.when there's enough space!"

Picking up the table, she kicked off the last remaining leg since it was just going to get in the way. Then she moved over to where she could lever the table under the beam and began to heave, remembering to make it look good so that if Lou was watching, he didn't see some astounding feat of strength that she had no business being able to accomplish.

"Slide that through, see if we can prop it up!" Lou called faintly.

Faith eased the beam back down and did as she was instructed, and she and Lou worked on using the table to create a body-sized gap under the beam. As they were levering that into place, Tommy and Franco came rushing in, Franco bearing an extinguisher and began to douse the flames on the beam and in the doorway. It created more smoke, but it wasn't as hot and Lou could help without getting scorched.

After the fire was doused, Tommy and Franco used their halligans to support the beam once the table was in place, while Faith reached down to grab Lou's hands and pull him through the gap they made. "Lou, was there anyone over there?"

Lou shook his head 'no'. "Let's get out of here then!" Tommy and Franco propped Lou up on their shoulders while Faith gathered up the equipment and they hustled down the stairs and back onto the street.

Once outside, they handed Lou off to a paramedic for a once-over while the rest of them peeled off their masks and shrugged off their helmets, air tanks and bunker jackets. Franco, Tommy and Faith sat down in the open cargo hatch of the rig with Tommy passing around cigarettes to each of them, with one left over while they waited for Lou.

Presently, Lou was given a reasonable bill of health. He came shuffling wearily over and received his cigarette from Tommy, and only then did they all light up. They smoked in silence for a couple of minutes.

Finally, Lou spoke up. "I dunno if I'm okay yet with having a woman on the crew, Faith. I dunno if I'll ever be truly okay with it." He took a long drag and exhaled. "But you pulled my rosy Irish ass out of a bad spot. So I'm okay with having _you_ on the crew."

Tommy and Franco bobbed their heads in agreement, with Franco patting Faith's boot and saying, "Nice job, _chica_."

"Thanks," Faith replied in a low voice. She felt like she'd just overcome a hurdle, even though she hadn't moved a muscle since she sat down.

Garrity and Silletti came up to check on Lou, who promptly cursed them both for their fussing. Once that particular debacle cooled down, Faith caught Garrity's eye. "Hey, did that mom and kid make it okay?"

Garrity shuffled his feet slightly. "The mom's strapped to a mask now, they're taking her to the hospital."

Faith's warm feeling of acceptance went away in a cold shock through her system. "The kid?" she repeated.

Silletti shook his head. "Too much smoke inhalation. She was probably dead before you got there," he murmured apologetically.

Faith exhaled in frustration, flung her cigarette out onto the sidewalk and punched the floor of the cargo hatch, (it was less likely to dent under her fist). "Shit."


	14. Who's Jimmy?

After her shift was done, Faith blew off any other chit-chat from the crew and stalked out to her bike, heading for one of the nearby centers of nightlife. When something happened, when one of her grabs went wrong or if the civilian didn't make it, she was filled with frustrated energy. Much like when she got into a knock-down, drag-out dead man brawl with a vamp or some other beastie of the night and didn't make a kill.

She settled on a club that wasn't too far away. Or, rather, it wasn't far by California standards. By a New Yorkers measure, it was a bit of a trek and not everyone would travel such a distance on a whim. But then, riding a motorcycle tended to take the sting out of that detail.

This was something she'd warned Xander could happen on occasion. She would have to burn off some pent up anger and frustration, and the only way she knew how to do that was with physical activity. Part of which was going and completely losing herself in a bout of dancing. Xander was fully aware of how she had to expend some of the extra fuel that being the Slayer (_a_ Slayer, now) provided. Faith promised not to do anything more than drive adjacent males on the dance floor insane with lust and Xander had simply given her that infuriatingly (sweetly) understanding smile and said, 'I know'.

Faith scowled. She was turning into such a girl. Well, it was time to get her Bitch on.

For the next forty five minutes, Faith cut a swath through the dance floor in the club she'd chosen. Male, female, she didn't care. If the song was sufficiently frenetic and the dancer she targeted had the moves, she'd dance with them. Granted, anymore she had sufficient maturity to avoid cutting in on a couple out of sheer spite. Although if there was a couple where both of the dancers were adequately skilled, she'd cheerfully dance with them both, moving like the base of her spine was made of a one hundred eighty degree ball bearing joint.

Eventually even she had to take a breather, and only then did she start scanning for potential vampiric threats. Her preferred method was scanning while sipping at a Sam Adams. Good enough beer that it wasn't going to make her want to fling it across the room in disgust, not so expensive that it would be a major waste if she had to abandon it in the pursuit of the bumpy forehead crew.

Vampire spotting in New York was hard. With such a mix of bodies in one highly condensed urban area, trying to peg them by their clothing like one could do back in the 'Dale was nigh impossible. Buffy swore she could pull off that particular feat anywhere, but Faith had been forced to develop her vamp radar (she refused to call it 'Spider Sense' like Xander) in order to ID the vampires for sure.

After about thirty minutes or so, she began to get a nibble. A vampire sidling in and surveying the crowd with a strange look that Faith couldn't quite place. Most of the time, she's only zeroed in on them after they've made a victim choice for the evening. She watched him for a few minutes, and realized what it was. The vampire was glancing over the crowd much in the way a consumer would survey produce of potentially dubious quality.

That just pissed Faith off more. Intellectually, she was aware that vampires often thought of humans as little more than ambulatory food, but this 'going to the grocery store' air about this particular vampire really got under her skin.

The vampire loitered about for about ten minutes, doing a slow circuit around the club, but apparently didn't find anything to his satisfaction, because he eventually shook his head and left again, alone.

Faith grumbled. It was easier tracking them when they were luring prey off to an alleyway. But on the bright side, no hysterical victims to try and explain to. She put her money down on the bar to pay for her beer and slipped out after the vampire.

This one was a bit cagier than most. He was sticking to normal pedestrian traffic pathways, which meant Faith couldn't just ghost up behind him and do the deed, because there were too many witnesses afoot. Whether this was on purpose or not, she couldn't tell. Eventually, he went off the beaten path heading for one of the many bridges in the New York area.

Off in the distance, there was a red truck parked at the side of the road. Faith squinted. It looked like the truck was shaking slightly. People doing 'the deed' or something else. As they got closer, Faith could see that it seemed like someone was in a fight inside of the cab of the truck. The vampire made a satisfied sound that reached Faith's ears.

_Oh, no. One thing at a time, vamp_, Faith thought. She glanced around and discovered that she was witness free for the moment and used the opportunity to sidle up behind the vampire and put her stake to work.

The vampire jerked as the stake plunged home and turned with an almost comical look of irritation on his face. "Hey, ow!" he protested, before falling to ash with an otherworldly wail as the demon was sent packing.

Faith burst into a sprint, running through the ash cloud toward the truck to see what was going on in the truck. As she got closer, she could hear a male voice yelling. "Jimmy, get _off_ me!"

She grabbed the door handle on the passenger side, jerked the door open and a body came spilling out of the truck onto the curb, a mostly empty pint of whiskey in his hand. Nobody else was in the truck.

Confused, Faith looked at the person on the ground and her eyes widened. "Tommy?"

Tommy Gavin blinked dazedly and looked back up at her. "Faith?"

She glanced around as if the person who had been attacking Tommy would still be lingering around somewhere. "Who's Jimmy?" she demanded. Tommy's silence told her that this was going to be either a really funny drunk story, or one of the wierdest things she'd heard in a while.


	15. Interlude - The Bad Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Graphic depiction of burn victims.

A construction project in an area that had been cleared for new buildings had a mishap occur. One of the welders fuel tanks developed a slow leak that nobody noticed until someone was a little tardy in extinguishing a cigarette before they went to get a fresh tank.

Then, everyone noticed. The building under construction hadn't had its fire systems in place yet; most of the facility hadn't even had all the walls covered over. This was all fuel that the fire eagerly consumed as it spread through the building-to-be.

Faith and Peter were on the second floor, trying to find any remaining crew before they burned to death. Unfortunately, even with the rapid response of their truck and all neighboring fire houses, the initial damage was done.

Peter glanced around and tilted his head, seasoned enough in the ways of firefighting that even though he didn't have enhanced hearing like Faith, he could still pick out when something was wrong. "Over there!" he shouted through his mask, pointing at a portable metal utility closet.

They crept cautiously closer to the utility closet until Faith could hear what Peter had heard - the sound of a hideous scream of agony. It went on and on, as if the owner of the scream no longer needed to inhale to scream. They rushed to the closet and Peter hooked the door handle of the closet with his halligan, giving the twist needed to release the latch.

Inside was what someone would have once called a construction worker. Now he could charitably be called 'burned meat'. Except burned meat generally wasn't screaming when one encountered it. Later, they would find that the poor man had caught on fire and tried to shut himself in the closet to extinguish the flames.

Peter stooped and looked at the man's blackened, papery flesh and melted face. "Boston Fire Department," he shouted, uncertain if the man could see or hear him any longer. "We've got to try to move you. This is going to hurt." There was no room for bedside manner here. The man wasn't likely to ever see a hospital bed, but they had to try and extract him before this segment of the building ignited.

He gestured to Faith to stand on the opposite side of the closet doors, so that Peter and Faith could both carry him. In his condition, any attempts to bend his joints could do even more damage to his charred, oozing flesh.

Faith had done rescues before where people were burned, but never this badly. No matter how gently they moved the poor fellow, it only elicited more shrieks of pain. Every nerve receptor the man had was broadcasting pain. They couldn't wait for the EMTs or a neck board due to the fire still actively burning.

They managed to get the man over the stairs and began to ease him down, Peter shouting assurances all the while, and Faith focusing on doing her job and, truth be told, keeping her stomach under control. As the Slayer, she'd seen more than her share of ugliness, but that was mostly demons and some really screwed up humans. This was just a random accident with no malice or evil behind it.

As they were coming out of the stairwell, the doorstop holding the door open slipped and jostled Faith unexpectedly. Her grip slipped and she overcompensated trying to prevent the man from falling. His flesh separated, sliding down his arm and exposing the raw meat underneath. The scream that resulted was one that shouldn't be possible to come from a human throat.

Faith's stomach lurched, but she kept her composure as they finally exited the building and let EMS take over trying to do what they could for the unfortunate construction worker. Once they got their masks off for the moment, Peter took Faith gently by the arm and walked her around to the other side of their rig, where she could take a moment to compose herself. They still had a job to do, but you could only ask so much of the human spirit. Even one that was a Slayer.

 

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

 

Much, much later, their crew returned to their firehouse and got ready to go home. Faith was still sitting on a bench in the truck bay, still wearing her bunker pants and staring off into space.

Peter looked into the garage area, looking around until he spotted her, obviously having freshly showered. "Hey you," he greeted gently.

Faith looked up at him. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Peter tilted his head in confusion.

"I screwed up. My grip slipped and-" She shook her head as if to rattle the horrible memory from her thoughts. "I screwed up," she reiterated.

"You didn't screw up."

"Peter, his arm-!"

"-was an _accident_." Peter walked over to Faith and crouched down in front of her so she couldn't evade his gaze. "You didn't make the door try to close. You didn't start that fire. You didn't burn his arm or the rest of his body. Things happen on this job that you can't control. Things that you will _never_ be able to control. And you have to be able to accept that and live with it, or you're not going to be able to do this job. Every failed grab, every save you don't make will eat you alive if you let it." Peter's tone and words suddenly, powerfully reminded Faith of Angel.

He reached out to cup Faith's cheek. "You're the best probie I've ever seen, and that includes myself. You're going to make one hell of a firefighter when your year is up."

"How do _you_ live with it, when things like that happen?"

"Well, using today as an example, I'm going to get changed, call Steven and see if he's free tonight, have a nice dinner with him and then do my level best to take him home and drill him through the mattress. Or be the one drilled, doesn't matter. Sex isn't the point here. What I'm doing is trying to connect with other people. It lets me see why the job is worth doing." He shifted his hands so that he could take both of Faith's hands in a firm yet gentle grip. "And you should go home, drag Xander out for dinner or drinks or something, and let him remind _you_ why this job is worth doing."

Faith looked away, uncomfortable with the thought of anyone getting too close, even though she and Xander already knew one another pretty well.

Peter wasn't letting her get away with that. He rose slightly and leaned forward to touch his forehead to hers, staring directly into her eyes. "Promise me you won't sit in a room alone and stew. I find out that's what you ended up doing here tonight, and I swear to God I'll make you spend time around people every day for the next month."

Faith snorted a ghost of a laugh. "Alright, alright, I promise."

"That's my probie." Peter pulled Faith to her feet and into a brief hug. "Go wash up, head home and give my eye candy a smack on the ass for me."

Faith did what was asked of her, sluicing off the current layer of soot and getting changed before walking home. Despite Peter's talk, it was hard for her not to stew on the problem. She couldn't tell him that she might have done more harm because of her enhanced strength. And though she could tell Xander, she still wasn't comfortable with the whole concept of opening up like that.

Faith hopped over the low fence in the front yard of the house that Xander had gotten. It was early evening, and oddly the garage was open and the light was on. She veered away to see if something was up or if Xander had just forgotten to turn off the light.

She found Xander lounging on a plastic chair, next to a lump of something or other covered in a canvas tarp. "Hey Faith!" he greeted. "I think I've solved our transportation issue."

The reason Faith had walked home, was because they weren't always able to coordinate their schedules so sometimes Faith couldn't get a ride from him. Shaking off a bit of her mood because of his infectious grin, she replied, "Yeah? How's that?"

Xander reached out to give the tarp a good yank. Underneath was a shiny new motorcycle. Harley Davidson of some model she couldn't identify, but it had a mighty big engine and the seat was low enough on the frame that her shorter legs could still reach to prop the bike up when she was stopped.

Faith didn't know what to say. She started to try and say something a couple of times, pointing at the motorcycle or Xander at random intervals. Clearing her throat, she tried to take a deep breath to tell Xander that he hadn't needed to do something like that.

Instead, her breath hitched and she suddenly found herself desperately stifling a sob, her eyes welling up with tears as the emotion of the day's events finally caught up to her. Faith moved one hand to cover her mouth, starting to turn away from Xander.

Except, that didn't seem to work either. Xander went from being seated to standing right in front of her as Faith turned right into his embrace. Her shoulders shook slightly as she silently wept.

Xander was going to have to call Peter later and thank him for the heads up. He'd been hiding the motorcycle in the tool shed for when Faith completed her probationary year. But the way Peter made their day sound, it seemed like she could use a pleasant surprise sooner than that, and Xander wasn't one that could sit idly by when someone he cared for needed him.


	16. Who's Jimmy - Dead Man Walking Remix

Tommy had a place he liked to go after a shift where a rescue didn't go so well. It was this place off the beaten path, right next to a bridge. Nobody ever bothered him there. He could sit, think about the various things in his life that needed fixing, stew, and most importantly of all, continue his secret drinking when he'd been letting everyone think he'd sober for nearly two years.

Tommy tended toward the forty percent alcohols when he did his drinking. Vodka, whiskey and all it's derivatives (bourbon, rye, scotch), rum on occasion, gin, those were his favorites. Which wasn't to say he didn't like beer or any of the lighter alcohol, but when he had a serious jones to get his alcoholic on, the hard stuff is what he reached for first.

Once Tommy got his truck parked where he wanted to sit and do his drinking, he reached under the seat to fish the pint of bourbon he'd picked up. Maker's Mark was on the menu today. It was a little pricier than Jack or Jim, but Tommy thought the melted plastic cap seal was just the neatest thing ever. He cracked it open and began the business of getting soused just enough to get himself home and fall asleep on the couch.

Mostly, Tommy just wanted the quiet. And the real joy of this secret drinking spot was that almost none of his ghosts came to bother him here.

"Hey, Cuz."

Except that one. Shit.

Tommy made a show of taking a long drink from the bottle in his hand before turning to the ghost of Jimmy Keefe, his cousin that died in the towers on 9/11, a fallen firefighter from Tommy's own crew, someone he loved more than most people on this earth.

Which was why visits from Jimmy lately were so awkward. Because what had started as Tommy checking in on Jimmy's widow, somehow turned into Tommy sleeping with his cousin-in-law. Ever since that started, Tommy had been dreading his ghostly visits from his cousin for fear that he'd find out. Once, recently, Tommy swore he'd seen Jimmy ghosting his way by while Tommy had been busily sexing Sheila up on her own couch.

Once Tommy finished his prolonged guzzle from the bourbon, he replied, "Hey Jimmy."

"You always pick this spot to drink in when Janet's sent the kids over to your house. You pussy." Janet was, of course, Tommy's soon-to-be ex-wife.

"What? I go lots of different places!" Tommy protested.

"That's not what I mean. I mean, you're a pussy for running off to do your secret evil drinking. If you're going to fall off the wagon, Tommy, at least have the balls to do it in front of people." Jimmy looked at Tommy from the passenger side of the cab with more than a little scorn.

"Oh, yeah, 'cause that's not going to lose me custody of the kids when Janet finds out." Tommy snorted. "Besides, I like it here. It's peaceful."

"Yeah, well I hate it. The Hudson reeks and so do all of its little offspring." Jimmy frowned, adjusting the ghostly wrap that held on his left middle finger. When the dust had settled at Ground Zero and the FDNY could start recovering bodies, that's all they could find of Jimmy Keefe. His left middle finger. Apparently, Ghostly Jimmy had found it and a ghostly hardware store to duct tape his finger back onto his incorporeal hand.

"So go! Am I stopping you?"

"Yes! I go where you go, Tommy, you know that."

"Great." Tommy sighed and took another pull from the bottle.

Jimmy nodded as if Tommy hadn't spoken. "Yep. I go where you go, Cuz. I go with you to fires. I go with you see Janet. I go with when you're playing hockey against the cops. The only place - the ONLY place I can't go with you yet, is in my own god damned house, Tommy!"

Tommy chewed on his lower lip nervously. "Hey, I didn't make the rules pal. I don't even know what the rules are for ghosts."

"You're right, Tommy. That's not fair to you, to expect you to know the rules about ghosts. And they don't exactly give us a manual so I can't give you a copy." Jimmy's jaw clenched for a few moments. "Besides, you're having enough trouble with the rules that you _do_ know."

"What-?" Tommy's question was cut off as Jimmy reached over to grab the lapels of Tommy's jacket and slam him against the driver's door.

"_MY_ wife, Tommy! How could you? My own cousin, my own _blood_-!" Jimmy jerked Tommy sideways so that his chin caught on the steering wheel before slamming him back against the window again. It was the cardinal rule of the firefighter - you never make a move on the widow of a lost brother in service.

"I didn't set out to do this, it just happened!" Tommy protested over the manhandling (ghost-handling?) he was receiving.

"Yeah, well, now I'm going to 'just happen' to beat the ever-loving shit out of you!" Tommy was jerked out of the the driver's seat somehow and flung to the opposite end of the truck cab. Tommy lashed out with his free hand and his feet to try and fend Jimmy off, but the logistics of trying to wrestle with a ghost were something Tommy had yet to work out. Jimmy slipped past Tommy's feeble defenses and began to slam him against the passenger door now.

"Get off me, Jimmy!" he shouted, trying to twist out from under his cousin, before the passenger door opened quite abruptly and Tommy tumbled out to the ground. He stifled a groan before a non-pissed-off, non-ghost voice spoke.

"Tommy?"

He looked up at his apparent rescuer with more than a little confusion. "Faith?"

She looked around for a moment before looking back to Tommy. "Who's Jimmy?"

Well, shit.


	17. You Got Ghosts

"I didn't say that," Tommy protested, going for the immediate denial.

"My ass, you didn't. You were rattling around in your truck like you were in a fight, and you said 'Get off me, Jimmy'." Faith folded her arms and shifted her gaze to the bourbon bottle in his hand. "I thought one of the guys said you were in A.A."

Tommy growled and pushed himself to his feet. "The guys say lots of things."

"In this case, I think they were saying true things. Was someone attacking you?"

"_No_." Tommy waved vaguely in the direction of his truck. "There was a bee or something."

Faith raised a skeptical eyebrow. "A bee. At night. Named Jimmy?"

From behind Tommy, audible only to him, his cousin's voice came to him again. "Tell her, you douchebag. Tell her about how you see the ghosts of the four of us who died on 9/11. Tell her about all the people you didn't rescue that you see all the time. Oh, and while you're at it, tell her how my being your cousin isn't enough incentive for you to keep your dick in your pants around my wife!" This was punctuated by a slap in the back of his head, which caused Tommy to jolt forward a half step.

Faith's eyes narrowed. "Are you havin' a seizure or something?"

Tommy tried very hard to keep his reactions from Jimmy's assorted abuses concealed. "Lost my balance."

"Uh-huh." She didn't sound very convinced.

"Whoever told you that you were a good liar was full of shit." Jimmy added scornfully. Tommy yearned to tell him to shut up, but didn't want to look like anymore of a nutbag in front of Faith than he already did.

Uncomfortable with the silence from Faith, he tried again. "It's just a bad day, you know that. I, y'know, needed to blow off steam."

"That's not the only thing you can blow," Jimmy snorted, stepping around into Tommy's field of vision again.

Faith's head tilted to the side sharply. Tommy continued to address her. "I don't do stuff like this all the time, y'kn--"

"Shut up." Faith reached out and clapped her hand over Tommy's mouth, still apparently listening for something.

"Mmph-mm."

"Man, you're so _whipped_." Jimmy shook his head. "Letting Leather Cheerleader Barbie tell you when to talk and-"

One of Faith's hands dipped into a jacket pocket and came out with a smoky gray crystal that she sharply flung to the ground, shattering it. From Tommy's point of view a wave of light flashed briefly. When his vision cleared, Jimmy was gone.

"What the-"

"It's not gone for good, but it's been given the boot for the time being. C'mon, Tommy. Take me back to my bike, then we're going to my place." Faith commanded.

"What for?"

"You got ghosts, baby, and I can't take care of that on my own." She shoved Tommy into the passenger seat and took over the driving briefly, while Tommy sat and wondered just what in the world had happened to him.


	18. Interlude - Probie No More

Peter stood several paces away with a pocket watch in hand while Xander and Steven waited at the same distance armed with bottles of champagne. The focus of their attention was Faith, standing with a sledgehammer hooked over one shoulder and a look of patient amusement as she watched Peter.

"Oh, c'mon Peter! Time's not just refusing to pass, it's tailgating at this point. You made your watch run backwards, didn't you?" Faith tapped her foot in mock impatience.

"Thirty more seconds, c'mon." Peter waved Faith down and stared intently at his watch for a little while longer.

"Y'know, it's thoughtful that he's been able to time this down to the minute," Xander said conversationally to Steven. "A little wierd, but thoughtful."

Steven chortled. "I'm going to have to have that engraved on some present I get for him. 'Thoughtful but wierd'."

"You know I can hear you, right?" Peter called, unsuccessfully preventing a smile from tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Pff. You're proud of that title and you know it." Faith snorted.

"Curses, foiled again. Okay Faith, get ready. Here we go. Five... four... three... two... one..."

"Happy New Year!" Xander shouted, pulling a noisemaker from a pocket and blowing into it, creating a _fweeeeee!_ sound.

Everyone else ignored him as Faith took the sledgehammer and brought it down on her firefighting helmet with the emblem on the front that said 'probationary firefighter', sending the helmet splintering in all directions as well as if Gallagher had been smashing watermelons.

As Xander and Steven popped the corks on the champagne, that baritone 'pop' that was the universal starting sound for party time, Peter pulled a wrapped box off a shelf and walked it over to Faith with a proud smile.

"This is so lame..." Faith murmured unconvincingly.

"Whatever, Southie-girl. Open the box," Peter urged.

Still trying to hide a pleased smile, Faith untied the ribbon and did away with the wrapping paper to reveal the box within. She opened the box and pulled out another firefighter hemlet, only this one was decorated with the emblem of a regular firefighter. Peter cheerfully plucked the helmet from her hands and settled it on top of her head.

"You, my dear little probie, are a probie no more," Peter announced as Xander and Steven were coming forward with the champagne flutes. He plucked one glass each from Xander and Steven, handing one to Faith before holding his own aloft. "To the best damned probie-turned-female-firefighter that it's ever been my pleasure to teach."

Xander and Steven summarized that a bit more succinctly. "To Faith!" they chorused and the three men reached out to touch glasses with the guest of honor before they all tipped the flutes back to dispose of the celebratory contents.

"And, as a double bonus, we have the added joy of getting to go have barbecue, beer and watch the Red Sox whomp the Jesus out of the Yankees." Peter waved everyone out of the garage and back into the house that he and Steven had just gotten into together.

"I thought you were from New York, Peter?"

"I am, but my father raised me to be a Red Sox fan. He was actually at all of the '75 World Series games. He actually took time off and drove from here to Boston and Cincinnati and back again." Peter chuckled. "I don't remember it very well, except he came home massively depressed."

Xander was mostly unaffected by the baseball talk. He liked to watch casually, but that was about it. And he always rooted for home teams in all sports. Dodgers, Lakers, Kings, Raiders even though they left. Although he'd developed a fondness for the Cleavland Indians after the exodus from Sunnydale.

The rest of the evening went much in that way, the regionally rabid fans being heckled by the unconcerned west coast native. They tore through the food and drink and eventually Xander and Faith left their friends to their own devices.

"No more tequila for Peter and Steven." Xander chuckled. "It makes their clothes fall off."

Faith huffed a brief laugh. "You're just skeeved out because you were sitting next to 'em."

"Only in the 'get a room guys' kinda way!" he protested.

"Such a sensitive boy," Faith sympathized, chucking Xander on the shoulder to demonstrate the alleged sympathy.

After a quick cab ride, they made their way into the house with Xander saying, "Barring emergencies, no patrol tonight."

"It's good to be the new full firefighter." Faith blew on her nails and polished them on her jacket lapel. "Except I already got my present early. Now what do I have to look forward to?"

"What, booze and the night off isn't good enough? Work, work, work," Xander grumbled.

"Big baby. You know what I'm talking about." Faith gave him a Look.

Xander hunched his shoulders. "Yes'm."

In short order, Faith and Xander were sprawled side-by-side on the couch while the DVD player was firing up her current Movie of the Week. Faith had discovered IMDB not long after Sunnydale collapsed and figured out each major movie that had come out while she'd been in prison and after she was released. She was now determined to see the number one box office seller for each week until she was caught up.

Her reasoning to Xander was, "The last thing I saw before I got out was _Glitter_. I feel like I gotta make it up to my brain."

By that point, Faith had almost caught up to the end of her time in prison, and she would be able to move on to movies that had come out after her release, ones she'd occasionally seen the trailers for. They lounged tipsily and occasionally shouted at the TV screen since there was nobody to be upset if they talked during the movie.

Once the film had wound down, (_Matrix Revolutions_, which ironically had come out shortly before Sunnydale had collapsed), Faith made a face. "Man, that's what all the hooplah was for?" she asked in sleepy indignation.

"They don't make hooplah like they used to," Xander agreed solemnly.

Faith leaned her head until it was resting on Xander's shoulder. This hadn't been anything new - they'd slowly, over the course of the last year, become comfortable enough while in proximity to enjoy simple friendly gestures such as this. Including at least one instance of dozing off that Faith later vehemently denied after the fact. (Of course, it didn't help that Xander had called her on her soft snoring.)

Xander watched as Faith's eyelids drifted a bit, and he gave a slightly rueful smile. Looks like he was going to be assigned pillow duty here shortly. Instead of dozing off, Faith took a deep breath and managed to pry her eyes back open for a bit.

"And good morning to you too, sunshine," Xander murmured with a weary half smile.

Faith craned her neck slightly so she could look at him for several moments. "Y'know, this year would've sucked rocks through a straw if it wasn't for you and Peter," she said solemnly.

Xander's half smile became a grin. "Nice to know I rank higher than a questionable dose of heavy minerals."

"Stop bein' a dick, I'm havin' a moment here," Faith scolded, giving Xander's bicep a whack.

"Okay, ow, jeez." Xander rubbed his arm.

She aimed her gaze at Xander's one remaining eye, and there was no hint of sultry seduction like there'd been in high school. No slightly manic look of going off the rails. And no trace of some misguided sympathy or apology in the offing, as best he could determine.

"I'm just sayin', you're important to me," Faith huffed, finding the cuff of Xander's flannel shirt terribly fascinating all of a sudden.

"Important like, not-a-Watcher important?"

Faith shook her head. She didn't remember him being this dense back in the day. "No, you dink. Important like..." She flailed around for an appropriate word that didn't seem sappy, before deciding that 'show' was better than 'tell'. Faith reached up with one hand on Xander's cheek, then stretched so that she could touch her lips to his for a few seconds.

This wasn't like the desperate, frenetic kisses she'd practically forced upon him during their post-Jhe encounter. She had long since moved beyond her misguided 'want-take-have' philosophy. This was simply a method of communication. _Dear Xander, I like you, y'dumbass. -Faith_

Once Faith backed off from the kiss, Xander blinked down at her for a few moments. "_Oh_. Important. Gotcha."

"I dunno if it means, y'know. But..." Faith trailed off, either uncertain or unwilling to proceed.

"You'd like to find out if it does mean, y'know?" Xander briefly considered voicing the 'y'know' aloud, but decided it was better if she got comfortable with it before he did any such craziness.

"Yeah." Faith conducted an in-depth inspection of her own kneecaps.

"Hm. Well, the first thing I'd like to say in response to that, is..." In lieu of words, Xander returned the exact same kind of kiss that she'd initiated only a minute before.

They never actually made it to an actual sleeping surface. But Xander decided the next morning when he woke up on the couch, still clothed and playing the role of Faith's pillow, that he wouldn't trade his stiff neck for anything.


	19. Be Gentle

Tommy couldn't figure out why he was still following Faith. Once she had gotten on her own motorcycle, he could've just not followed. Yet here he was, watching her phenomenal backside weave a Harley through late night New York traffic, leading the way to her house. Except for that one thing.

She had known Jimmy was there, talking to him. She did something to make him go away. And there was no booze or pills involved in the process. Tommy wanted to know what. He didn't mind still seeing Jimmy and the other guys so much, (at least, before he started seeing Sheila), but the ghosts of the people he couldn't save? Yeah, they could go.

Tommy's estimation of Xander and Faith's financial situation went up a few notches when their trip led him to a neighborhood similar to his own, where people had houses and driveways and garages, as opposed to dealing with city parking headaches.

He parked in front of their house as Faith waited for the garage to finish opening before scooting her Harley inside. Once the bike was set up on its stand, she beckoned to Tommy, waiting so she could close the garage again.

Faith led the way inside, simply leaving the door open rather than inviting Tommy in. Tommy looked around as he absently closed the door behind him. Nice furnishings, no real mess. Something that looked like a locked metal cabinet that stood at around six feet in height. And Xander on the phone talking to someone he called 'Will'.

Xander covered the mouthpiece on his phone and murmured quietly, "Heya, Tommy," before returning to his conversation. "I know, you have a list of requests as long as my leg. If it's possible to do this ourselves, send me the information, otherwise we're going to need some kind of minion. You know what happens when I try to do stuff like this unsupervised." He paused and waited for his reply. "Okay, that works. I'll call you back, Will. I have a little History of the World Part One spiel to give here. I know. I love you too."

"Sorry about that," Xander apologized as he set the phone on the charger. "Had to call in the big guns since we're not so large with the mojo." He flipped open a laptop computer and fiddled with it for a bit, before waving Tommy over to the couch. "Something to drink, Tom?"

Tommy was having a strange out-of-body-but-not experience. He knew all this was going on around him, but he almost felt like he was observing it from the sidelines, like he wasn't really participating in the events occurring. "I honestly don't know."

Faith shrugged. "He's supposed to be in A.A, but I found 'im getting a righteous drink on before I called you. At this point, I don't think anything more is gonna hurt."

Xander seemed surprisingly understanding. "Up to you, Tommy. I'm not gonna judge. I know from A.A, so it's really your call."

Tommy cocked his head. How did someone as young as Xander - twenty five or twenty six, tops! - know shit about A.A? He waved a hand in surrender. "If you got somethin', great, if not, don't worry about it."

Xander nodded. "Beer, I think. We always have one when she gets home anyhow. And I'd rather you were relaxed than keyed up. Plus, you aren't likely to get any drunker off just the one. I also don't want you rationalizing everything tomorrow under the 'I was drunk' umbrella. " Xander puttered into the kitchen and began to rummage around.

Tommy knew he shouldn't, but this definately went above and beyond the regular stresses of his life. And he was getting frighteningly good at this self justification business.

Xander appeared a few minutes later with three beers and a giant bowl of nachos. "Good thing I made a lot. Dig in if you're hungry, Tom, have a few swallows of your drink, then we're going to start talking."

Suddenly ravenous, Tommy helped Faith demolish about a third of the assembled nachos while Xander disappeared into another part of the house for a bit. He studiously avoided any important conversation while they were eating. His gut told him that there was going to be more than enough serious coming soon and he had to concentrate on theoreticallly plausible stories.

Eventually, Xander returned and settled onto the couch beside Faith. "Ready, Tommy?"

Tommy shrugged, not entirely certain what he was supposed to be ready for.

"Okay then." Xander laced his fingers in front of him and speared Tommy with his one-eyed gaze. "Whose ghost were you seeing under that bridge?"

"Woah, I didn't say anything about ghosts, that was all her, pal." Tommy shook his head and pointed at Faith.

Faith rolled her eyes as Xander also shook his head. "Don't bullshit a bullshitter. Faith couldn't see the ghost, but she could tell it was there, and it was obviously talking to you."

Tommy snorted in disbelief. "So, she can tell when ghosts are around? What is she, some kind of psychic?"

"Not exactly. She's more of a supernatural cop," Xander replied without a hint of a smile on his face.

"And I'm just supposed to believe that? What, do they give badges for this kinda thing?" Tommy was starting to eye the door, figuring he could get to the truck and get in before either of them could catch him.

Xander looked to Faith and nodded his head. "Just be gentle."

Faith dusted her hands of nacho salt and stood up to walk over to Tommy, looking down at him speculatively.

"What?" Tommy scoffed.

There was no response from Faith, however. She looked him over for a bit, before she reached down to gently press the lapels of his coat together, so she could grip them with one hand. Tommy began to roll his eyes, but before he could complete the motion, Faith gave a sharp tug and hoisted Tommy up over her head without any apparent effort on her part.

"Woah, hey, put me down!" Tommy flailed his limbs to no avail.

"Ghosts are real, Tommy. So are vampires, werewolves, demons and all kinds of other wierd shit." Xander explained calmly, as if his incredibly hot girlfriend that didn't weigh more than Tommy's legs wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. "Faith fights them. Only in this case, ghosts aren't something she can actually, y'know, beat up, so we've gotta call in for backup. You want the full story later, I'll tell you, but for now, we just need the facts. Can you suspend your disbelief and answer my questions without lying, or does Faith start doing overhead presses with you as the weight?"

Tommy stared down at Faith for several long moments. "I'll be good," he finally conceded in a very small voice.


	20. Taboo Trough

Once order had been restored and Tommy had taken a few moments to pick up the shards of dignity scattered through the living room, Xander and Faith sat patiently while Tommy gathered his thoughts.

"Just tell us who you've been seeing, how long they've been appearing to you and the gist of what they say to you," Xander urged. "Don't worry about it sounding silly or unbelievable. We've been racking up a backlog of 'holy shit' for years."

Tommy couldn't believe he was about to talk about this to anyone. He almost told his cousin once, but his pride prevented him from following through. After taking a long, fortifying swig, he leaned back and rested the beer bottle on his middle.

"It's been since not long after 9/11," Tommy confessed. The two before him simply nodded encouragingly. "It started with my cousin, Jimmy Keefe."

"One of the guys on the plaque at the house, yeah?" Faith asked.

Tommy nodded. "Most of the time, he just wants to bitch about being dead. Sometimes, we get into really interesting conversations, though." Although Tommy wasn't going to tell anyone about the little conversation he had about relationships with Jimmy. Even if he was still staunchly pro-lesbian.

"Does he every try to tell you to do anything? Something that might not be the best idea ever?" Xander asked, moving the conversation along.

"Not really. Sometimes he tries to vote for one idea over another, but I don't really listen and he normally doesn't get pushy about it."

Faith shook her head. "Apparently, he decided to get pushy tonight."

Tommy winced. "Yeah, about that..." He wasn't sure how to continue.

"Whatever you say, it doesn't leave this house, we promise," Xander stated up front.

"Right." He took a deep breath. If it was just Xander, he might not have as much trouble saying this, but Faith was a firefighter as well. "Well, we made each other a promise that if one of us ever died in the line of duty, the other would look after our family for us. So I've been checkin' up on his wife and kid from time to time. Then one day, I took Sheila to dinner and.." He shrugged helplessly.

Faith hissed a breath of disbelief. "Ooh. Tommy, you didn't."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah. I didn't set out to do it, and I've tried to stop, but-"

"I'm missing something, aren't I?" Xander asked.

Faith wavered her hand in the air. "Kinda. It's considered taboo to make a move on a widow of a dead firefighter. Or a firefighter's wife or familiy. Tommy double dipped in the taboo trough." She glanced back to Tommy. "The guys don't know, do they?"

"Franco, Lou and the Chief might suspect, but nobody's said anything outright yet." Tommy ran his fingers through his hair and let out a slow breath. "I just don't know how to explain it. It's been years since someone's had that kind of passion for me, y'know?"

"I'm familiar with the syndrome." Xander nodded, exchanging a secretive smile with Faith. Prior to her, he hadn't had a serious relationship since Anya. "Alright, so Jimmy was beating on you because of his wife. But that only happened recently. Who else do you see?"

"The other three guys from the crew that died on that day. Sometimes Billy, who died right before you guys showed up at the house. And a few people that couldn't be saved. A little girl who died, but her cat lived. A boy that burned alive. And a teenage girl that got killed on the Jersey Turnpike." There werre others that he wasn't sure were visitations or flickering warnings, and Tommy wasn't sure if he should mention them.

Xander, damn him, seemed to sense that. "Anyone else?"

Tommy covered his forehead with his hands. "Once, I thought I saw my oldest daughter after she'd been in a car accident, but she lived, so obviously I never saw her like that again."

Xander let it slide - that one could go either way, really. "Okay. So a total of, what? Eight or nine ghosts? Do you only see them one at a time, or do they appear in a group?"

"Something like that, yeah. And it's a tossup. Sometimes it's just one, sometimes a few of 'em, and sometimes the whole gang."

"And none of the rest of them try to do anything to you, or get you to do stuff that would, say, result in the destruction of the world?" Xander seemed particularly anxious about this question.

Tommy looked baffled as Faith piped in, "It's not the First, Xan. The First can only be one person at a time and they can't touch anyone. This is ghosts."

Xander looked absurdly relieved at that. He noticed Tommy's confusion. "Long story. We'll try and tell you later sometime." He glanced at his watch and looked at Tommy closer. "You look wiped. Why don't you crash on the couch for the night. Even not counting the booze -"

"Which there was a whole shitload of," Faith supplied.

"- this house is protected. No ghosts will be able to get in here. I have a call to make to see what we can do about your problem, and we'll go from there, alright?"

Tommy was considering declining, but the prospect of no visits from his past was too tempting to pass up. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I should do that."

Faith and Xander stood up, with Xander plucking the cordless from the charger again. "Bathroom's down the hall, help yourself to the fridge if you get hungry. There's a blanket on the back of the couch," he offered simply, before leaving the room with Faith.

Kicking off his shoes, Tommy laid back on the couch with a sigh. He thought he should be more freaked out by all this, but it just wasn't coming. Forgetting about the blanket, he put an arm over his eyes and slowly drifted off into a wonderfully dreamless sleep.


	21. Interlude - Duty Calls

Faith and Xander returned home at an unholy hour, which was fitting, since the demon they'd just finished slaying was unholy in its own right. Even less pleasing was the fact that both of them were dripping with various demon goo and fluids.

"Y'know, I figured when we got this gig, we'd be fighting demons with a theme that was complementary to firefighting," Xander grumbled. "Some fire demon that could only be slayed with a blessed fire extinguisher, something like that. But, noooo. We get the same old oozes."

"I killed that one demon with a fire extinguisher," Faith protested.

"That doesn't count! You bludgeoned it to death with the fire extinguisher after it broke your sword." Xander pulled over the laundry basket they kept in the garage for occasions such as these when they came home covered in demon parts. "It's like that vampire you staked behind the firehouse with the haft of a broken halligan."

"Spoilsport." Faith began peeling off her saturated clothing.

"Uh, Faith?"

"What?"

"Let me close the garage door first?"

"Oh. Right. 'Cause there's loads of people out and about at O'Dammitall Thirty in the morning." Faith rolled her eyes patiently. Her guy was something of a prude at times.

Xander tapped the garage door button with the heel of his hand, one of the few areas of his person not coated in former demon. Only after it had closed completely did he turn on the garage light.

"I'll have you know, that it's just because I'm greedy and want to horde all the naked Faith viewing to myself," he declared airily.

"You're full of shit, but I'll cut you a break this time, 'cause it's cute."

"Cute?" Xander huffed. "Don't I even rate a 'charmingly quirky'?"

"Nope, sorry. 'Cause I didn't know 'quirky' was a real word."

"Hoist by my own petard." Xander sighed dejectedly.

"Wait'll we get cleaned up, _then_ we'll see about hoisting something." Faith threw him a lightly saucy look as she padded barefoot (and bare-everything-else) into the house.

"Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter." Xander drifted after Faith, slightly mesmerized.

As it turned out, post-slay mutual showers were only sexy once all the demon residue was sluiced away. Before that, there was a great deal of trying not to slip in the bathtub while the goo washed down the drain. After that, well, Xander was glad he'd renovated the bathroom with a sturdier tub.

With the both of them refreshed, Xander puttered into the kitchen to warm up the lasagna that he'd had ready before they went out demon-squishing.

Faith glanced at the clock as she was toweling her hair dry. "Hey, we better go get on the laptop. We've got that thing with Giles."

"Right." Xander set a timer in the kitchen and scurried to fetch the laptop and set it up for a web conference. They waited patiently while they waited for the connection to begin.

After a few minutes, they were rewarded with the picture snapping on abruptly and seeing Giles giving someone a glare off camera. "--feel silly talking to a computer screen, Willow."

"You're not, Giles. You're talking to us," Xander noted with amusement.

"What? Oh, hello!" Giles jumped at the sudden greeting addressed to him after the few seconds of expected transmit delay.

"Rupert, if you hate the computer conference thing so much, why'd you bother arranging one with us? We coulda just called," Faith noted, not bothering to hide her smile at the flustered Giles.

"This once, I felt it was necessary. I hated the thought of not doing this face to face, or as close as we can manage with the current upheaval." Giles settled down and leaned back in his chair.

"Upheaval? Who's getting heaved?" Xander asked, raising his eyebrows.

Willow leaned over so she could be seen on camera. "Hi Xander! Hey Faith. Some vampire got all proactive in Germany and is trying to lead a charge of a few dozen vampires to make a whole pile more."

"You need us to head on out? I can put in for some time off from work." Faith looked alert despite the late hour.

"No, no, that won't be necessary. We have enough Slayers to put this down. However, there's another issue that you might be better equipped to deal with." He glanced off to the side. "Willow, would you?"

From off screen again, Willow's voice was heard. "One sec." After a few moments, Giles' image was replaced by a computer map of North America, which quickly zoomed in on New York City and surrounding regions.

Willow's voice became louder now that she was using her own microphone. "Okay, this is gonna be a little imprecise, 'cause when I tried to take the magical impressions and make a map that way, I kinda blew up my laptop," she explained sheepishly.

Giles cleared his throat. "Now, what she's going to show you, is an approximation of spectral activity at different periods of time. The darker the shade of blue, the more activity was occurring at the time. First, we have the New York area at the beginning of 2001."

They watched as blue spots of varying shades appeared sporadically across the map. "What's that big dark blue blob from?" Xander asked.

Willow paused and cross-referenced the location. "Uh, the old Yankees stadium."

"Boooo," Faith called reflexively.

"What?" Giles asked.

Xander gave Faith a _behave!_ expression. "It's a Boston thing, or so I'm told," he explained.

"Uh, right." Willow audibly decided that it wasn't worth asking for clarification.

Giles did as he always did in the face of cultural misunderstanding; ignored it and moved on. "This next estimation is the level of spectral activity after the tragic events of 9/11." The map changed, and there was a large swirl of darkest blue without being black around where the Twin Towers used to be.

Xander and Faith frowned slightly while Giles continued to speak. "The sheer volume of random, senseless deaths would contribute to the rise of angry spirits, of course. As time went on, and the spirits made some measure of peace through various means, the spectral activity should normally abate. But as you see from the latest projections, this is not the case." The map changed again and the swirl around Ground Zero got even larger, with more isolated splotches all through the map of the city.

"Like something got 'em all riled up and they started branching out?" Xander guessed.

"Precisely."

"Where do we fit in?" Faith asked, not seeing the connection.

"Xander, do you remember the events in Riley's fraternity during Buffy's freshman year of university with the poltergeists?" Giles asked as the map vanished and Giles' face reappeared.

"The thing that the party guests acting all weird and made Buffy and Riley turn into horizontal Energizer Bunnies?" Xander asked with a mischievous grin.

He was rewarded with Giles making a strangled noise and a cough before stammering, "Erm, yes, that's - that's the one."

Faith grinned with delight at the expression Giles had on his face. "That's a story I'll have to get you to tell me later."

"This is no joking matter," Giles interrupted sharply. "Poltergeists, left unchecked, can decimate a population as they feed on the negative emotions of the people in the area. And given how many people live in the Manhattan and surrounding areas-"

"Dire consequences, we get it Giles," Xander interrupted soothingly.

"Sorry, Rupert. Just lookin' for something new to tease Buffy about," Faith offered by way of apology.

"I expected as much." Giles rubbed his forehead. "I just shudder to think what sort of damage a major spectral infestation could do to such a large population center."

"Again I ask, where do we fit in?" Xander restated.

The monitor split-screened so that Willow was visible as well. "City statistics are reporting a rise in emergency incidents in the general New York area. Stuff that requires police and fire and EMTs and all."

Light dawned for Faith. "And you want us to go to New York and start nosing around, with me transferring to FDNY? I think I gotta be a New York resident for a while first, before I can apply."

"That will be taken care of. Once you've moved, a bit of judicious record doctoring will show that you've lived in the suburbs for some time, and your times of service with the Boston Fire Department will be adjusted accordingly." Giles chuckled humorlessly. "Finally, our bureaucratic machinations being used for good instead of evil."

Faith looked downcast, which Giles eventually saw on the camera. "I hate to ask it of you, after you've worked so much to get where you are today, but it's far easier to ask someone in the emergency service field than to try and expect another to fake it."

"Nah, I'll do it. I just hate leaving my crew behind here, y'know?"

"I'm very sorry, Faith. If there were any other way-"

"It's cool." She shrugged with feigned carelessness. "The sooner the quicker, I'm guessin'?"

"Indeed." Giles murmured.

Xander slid his hand over to cover Faith's. "Shouldn't take more than a week. We've got some stuff to gather before we head out."

"We'll be covering any moving costs. And thank you both." Giles cleared his throat. "Willow is going to let you know what magical counter measures she's going to prepare for you. I'll go see to getting your residency information and department records to agree for the sake of the New York Fire Department." Giles stood up out of his chair and his half of the teleconference shut down, leaving Willow's half to fill the monitor.

She looked uncomfortable as she took over. "I'm, uh, going to send you guys some stuff to banish spirits if they're directly harming you or someone else. They're just little crystals that you have to break on the ground and one will disrupt about a twenty foot sphere's worth of ghostly ether-space."

"What if we need some more permanent ghosty damage?" Xander asked.

"It depends on the situation. I may be able to send you something, or we'll need to send someone to perform a ritual. And if you guys need research mojo, Dawn's spending the next year with Buffy in Cleavland."

"Well, we got our equipment, we got our brains, and we got the feet on the ground. I think this is-" Xander trailed off, as a look of mixed amusement and horror crossed his features.

"Uh oh. Brace for impact," Willow winced in anticipation.

"Yeah, wicked bad joke incoming." Faith leaned away from Xander in case this required any physical demonstrations.

"Will, you're sending us into Manhattan to fight ghosts. If I run into a giant marshmallow man, I'm finding the least supernatural island I can and turning into Robinson friggin' Crusoe. I'm just sayin'."

Willow gave a disappointed look while Faith pulled out a throw pillow and walloped him one in the head. "Whatever, Venkman. Thanks Red. We'll look for the ghost-b-gone when we get into the new place."

"Take care of yourselves, you guys." Willow gave them both a look of concern before ending the connection.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Xander squeezing Faith's hand lightly.

Xander was the first to break the quiet. "So, big blowout bash with Peter and Steven?"

"Huge. We may lay waste to part of South Boston."

"Sounds like a moral imperative to me."


	22. Loudest. Silence. Ever.

The next day was an exercise in pretending everything was fine. For Xander and Faith, this was business as usual, due to the years of practice. For Tommy, not so much.

He was good at maintaining a semblance of fine when the not-so-fine events were normal, every day bits of human drama. But once he'd been smacked in the head with the supernatural, it threw his acting ability off. Tommy spent most of the day at work jumping at shadows, to Faith's vast amusement.

But Faith's amusement was short lived. In the early afternoon, she spotted Xander coming in from the front of the firehouse, slipping his cell phone into his pocket and looking quite grim. Faith trotted up to him, since there wasn't anything of consequence going on apart from the Probie washing the rig yet again.

"Somethin' wrong?" she asked quietly.

Xander made a pained face. "Not sure. Giles just called to tell me who he's sending out to help with Tommy's little haunting problem. Dawn and Robin." Clearly, he was expecting this to be a Big Deal.

Faith blinked, her expression assuming it's default look of nonchalance. "Whatever it takes to get the job done, yeah?"

Xander visibly repressed his frustration. "You don't have to make like everything is okay."

"While we're at work, I do!" Faith hissed, looking angry until Xander gave her a reproachful look. "Just don't, alright?" Her voice lost its edge. "The last thing we need is for anyone but Tommy knowing anything about our past history. Firefighters are like a pack of starving wolves when it comes to juicy gossip. We'll deal with it when they get here." She glanced around to make sure the Probie wasn't watching and reached out to cup Xander's cheek with one hand before going back inside.

By the end of the day, Faith had settled her 'about to encounter the ex-boyfriend' jitters and was able to indulge in standard firefighter banter and ball-busting. At the end of the shift, she, Tommy and Xander were loitering outside once most of the crew had gone home, waiting for the arrival of the supernatural backup squad.

"So neither of these two people is like you?" Tommy asked Faith curiously as he finished the cigarette he was puffing away at. Tommy had been rather conspicously chain-smoking throughout the day.

"Nope, but they're directly connected. One's the son of a Slayer, a woman like me, the other is the sister to the oldest of us currently living." Faith made a face and looked at Xander. "I still say the title should to go me, though. Three months off for dead behavior is so not fair."

Xander snorted. "Don't look at me. I'm the not-a-Watcher here, I don't get to make the rules."

"After this is done, I'm gonna need a whole pile of backstory." Tommy shook his head. "I feel like I came in on the middle of a movie."

Faith spotted a rental vehicle approaching. "Xan," she called to get his attention and tipped her chin in that direction.

Before the rental even came to a stop, a brunette streak leaped out of the passenger side and barreled into Xander, causing him to make an, "Oof!" sound and getting knocked back a step or two.

"Xander!" To Tommy's eyes, a tall, leggy brunette girl seemed to have materialized from nowhere for the sole purpose of squeezing the life out of Xander.

"It's alwyas darkest before the Dawn," Xander noted with a wheeze, indicating the setting sun.

The girl pulled back from him and gave him a swat on the chest. "How long did you Google before you found _that_ quote? And anyway, that really only works if you pick me up from the airport after a red-eye flight." She stepped back and gave Xander a critical once over.

By this time, a tall, fit looking black man with a shaved head had parked the car and moved over to join them. "Well, that scared a few years of my life out of me," he drawled in a rich, precise baritone. "Sorry Xander, I didn't expect her to do that."

From behind the group, a gravelly voice rang out, "Hey, what's all this?" Chief Riley came out of the firehouse in his civilian clothes and approached them, curious about the gathering in front of his domain.

"Oh, hey Chief," Tommy greeted. "These are some friends of Xander and Faith in town visiting, uh..." He suddenly realized that he didn't know any names.

Xander took over. "Chief Jerry Riley, Tommy Gavin, this is Dawn Summeers and Robin Wood," he introduced, indicating each of them before subsiding.

"Oh, good," Chief Riley bobbed his head. "You gonna show 'em around, take 'em out on the town?"

"I actually used to live here, Chief, but it's been a long time," Robin supplied.

Dawn shrugged. "I've been here a double handful of times. Nothing new."

"Still, it's good to go and see what's changed." Chief Riley stopped and looked at Robin more closely. "Wait. Robin Wood? Was your mom Nikki Wood?"

Robin's eyebrows went up along with Xander, Faith and Dawn. "Yeah, she - holy hell. Fireman Jerry?"

"God damn, kid, I haven't seen you since you were a little sprout." Jerry gave a pleased smile and stepped forward to give the man he'd known more than thirty years prior an unashamed hug. "I was sorry to hear about your mom. Me n' Jeannie always wondered what happened, but I figured Bernie must've taken care of you."

"Yeah, he did," Robin chuckled. "God, I remember he used to hate you calling him that."

Jerry shrugged. "I wouldn't have, if he hadn't been so uptight. But he was, so I had to give him double rations of shit!"

The others passed a look around. Xander raised his hand. "I got this one." He looked from Jerry to Robin and back again. "So, you guys know each other?"

Robin looked embarassed, but Jerry nodded cheerfully. "Oh, hell yeah. I used to know his mom when I was working out in the Bronx. She, uh, used to do volunteer work there and in Harlem. You know, before they had outreach programs n' shit like that."

"It's okay Fir- er, Jerry. They know," Robin chuckled.

"Yeah?" He looked at Dawn and Faith in turn, frowning for a moment before announcing, "I can't tell. Which one's the Slayer?"

Xander's jaw dropped open. Loudest. Silence. Ever.


	23. Borrowed Time

"Yeah, I'm the Slayer. Or, one of 'em, nowadays," Faith responded automatically, too stunned to think about lying.

"Okay Chief, I know you're a worldly guy, with age comes experience and all that. But _how_ in the honey-dipped _hell_ do you know about the Slayer?" Xander asked. This was a surprise that he never anticipated happening.

Jerry was clearly enjoying the bomb that he'd dropped. "What else? She saved me from vampires. There I was, fresh out of probie school, tryin' to get to the subway late at night, and I get jumped by two of the bumpy-headed assholes. Nikki happened to be at the other end of the alley and heard the fight, she came and saved my then-skinny Irish ass."

"And you still remembered it afterward?" Dawn looked puzzled. "Most people don't, after all."

"Yeah, I remember Bernie saying that. Something about people explaining the unexplainable so that it makes sense to 'em." Jerry shrugged. "I don't know how I remembered, I just did."

"People rationalize what they can't explain," Xander murmured, remembering vaguely Giles' theory on the subject of normal people and the supernatural.

"That's the one." Jerry nodded. "Anyways, after I found out what was goin' on behind the scenes, I couldn't justify to myself not at least lending a hand. Backup when she found a nest, blocking off a building or an apartment so that nobody else would walk in while she was fighting, that kinda thing." He looked at Robin and a reminiscent expression flashed across his face. "When she was pregnant with you, me n' Bernie took over her patrols once she was far enough along that her balance was all messed up."

"Yeah, I remember him telling me about that, somewhere in my teens," Robin agreed.

"What'd you do after Nikki, y'know..." Faith wanted to know.

"Kept it up on my own as best I could for a while. I wouldn't go chasin' trouble, but I got pretty good at spotting vampires trolling for blood in bars." Jerry spread his hands casually. "If I could take 'em down without any major damage to myself, hey, might as well. But, I stopped once my son was born. Figured, I was already livin' on borrowed time as a fireman, might as well not tempt fate when I got a family to think about.

"Can't say as I blame you there." Robin nodded. "You did what you could, for as long as you could."

"I still keep my axe and halligan in the car, just in case," Jerry added. "I've only had to use it maybe once every five years, but still." He turned, hands on hips to consider Tommy. "How'd you get mixed up in all this, Gavin?"

Until that point, Tommy had been quiet as a church mouse, trying to avoid Jerry's notice. "I, uh-"

"He's got ghosts," Faith supplied without any preamble. "The four on the house's 9/11 plaque, plus Billy Warren, plus some random victims that couldn't be saved."

"Oh, bad luck Tom." Jerry scratched his head. "I remember dealin' with a few of those way back when. You say you see Jimmy, Bobby, Vito, Ricky and Billy?"

Tommy exhaled slowly. "Yeah. Mostly Jimmy, but the rest of the guys show up sometimes."

Jerry chewed on that for a few moments, then glanced from Robin to Xander to Faith. "So, Xander, you're the Watcher here?"

"I"m the not-a-Watcher. It's a thing. Basically, I refuse to take the title of Watcher, since I never went to any training academy-school-dealie, and I'm neither stuffy nor British." Xander beamed.

"I won't argue there." Jerry chuckled. "Need another hand? I'm not as young as I used to be, but I can still swing an axe and a halligan."

"Let me ask the brains of the outfit." Xander looked at Dawn, "We got room for a retired Slayer-helper?"

"The extra hand wouldn't hurt." Dawn nodded. "We're going to have to summon the ghosts that have latched onto Mr. Gavin here, and sometimes demons pick up on the magicks and come along for the ride."

"I'll go pull my car around and follow you," Jerry said.

"Also, we're going to need a priest," Dawn added.

Jerry thought for a second. "So, we call Tommy's cousin."

Tommy frowned. "I don't know if I like the idea of Mickey getting mixed up in this. I barely believe it myself, and it's friggin' happening to _me_."

"Call him while we're on the way to where we're going," Jerry commanded. "It's easier than going to someone we don't know and having to convince 'em that we're not insane."

"We'll probably still have to do that. Mick's my A.A. sponsor, remember?"

"Man, I wish we knew about you when we got to town, Chief." Xander shook his head. "Would've made things a lot easier."

"Well, you know now, kid. And since we're not doing anything official for the FDNY, call me Jerry for the duration. This is your ballpark, I'm just a groundskeeper."

"Hell with that 'just a groundskeeper' shit." Faith snorted. "You've fought your time, you just had life happen and you walked away from the life. Doesn't make it any less yours."

"Whatever we're calling it, let's get going. The guys' souls aren't getting any closer to peace with us standin' out here and bullshittin'." Jerry fished a cigar out of his pocket and walked off to his car.

"It's good to be the chief, I guess." Xander grinned. "You heard the man. Let's get going."


	24. Interlude - Farewell Party

As far as good bye parties went, the one for Faith was pretty memorable. Her entire crew, plus Xander and Steven, took her out on a pub crawl in a valiant effort to visit as many as possible before they became too weary, drunk or both to visit any more.

With Faith having otherworldly stamina, Xander being used to the late night hours and Peter simply being a stout individual with a heavily Irish biological origin, it took quite a while for them to call it quits. Once the rest of the crew was ready to call it a night, the four friends retired to Xander and Faith's house to settle in for some serious drinking.

By that point, it was only Faith and Peter still vertical. Xander was nestled into a corner of the couch, dozing lightly. He'd wake up now and again to interject a comment when the chatter woke him up. Steven had folded not long after they got to the house, not being a big drinker or a night owl and was curled up on the floor. Peter was sitting on the floor, leaning back on the couch with Steven using his leg as a pillow. Faith was sitting beside Peter and using Xander's leg as a headrest.

The house was mostly in boxes. The furniture was still out, and the kitchen still had a few items of food left, but everything else had been packed in a two day marathon. Faith was still vaguely surprised at how much _stuff_ had accumulated. She never owned more than she could carry on her back since she became the Slayer. Suddenly, all this _stuff_ came along and she hardly knew what to do with it.

"So, you're leaving in two days?" Peter was asking.

"Yup. Turn in keys, make sure the movers don't explode anything and we're outta here." Faith nodded lazily, setting her beer on the coffee table.

"Everything is okay, other than the helping friends in New York, right? Nobody's trying to guilt you or anything?" Peter tipped his head, looking at Faith with drunken concern.

"Nah, nothing like that." Faith shook her head firmly. "I mean, I don't _want_ to leave. But they've dropped everything for me on more than one occasion. Only fair to help them in return, y'know?"

"Like family?"

Faith shrugged casually. "If you wanna call it that."

"Well, the same thing applies here, you know." Peter looked down at her with more than a little fondness. "I grew up an only child, but if I'd had any sisters, I would've wanted one like you."

"Pff. I woulda given your dad an aneurysm." Faith gave a weak grin and tipped her chin down so she could hide swallowing the lump in her throat.

"Just sayin', kiddo." Peter seemed pleased with himself.

"You're just upset to be losin' your fag hag." Faith teased without malice. From someone else, those were fighting words. Between them, it wasn't important, any more than when Peter teased Faith for being a Southie, or for 'Shacking up with a Californian'.

"And your eye candy," Xander murmured blearily in one of his awake moments.

"Silly girl. You two aren't going to be rid of me _that_ easily. You'll always be my fag hag." Peter reached over and gave Xander's hip a swat. "And my eye candy."

"Not tonight dear, I have a headache." Shortly, Xander was snoring again.

Peter shook his head. "Did you find out which crew you're going to be on?"

Faith nodded. "Yeah, they sent me a thing." She reached out for an envelope on the coffee table. "Uh, Battalion 15, Ladder 62."

"You're kidding. Who's the chief?"

"Jerry Ri-- oh, holy shit. That's funny."

Peter emitted a sound suspiciously akin to a giggle. "When you get there, tell him I said hi. It'll help get past the 'girl-in-the-firehouse' syndrome."

"Make my new chief squirm? How can I pass that up?"


	25. Suspend Your Disbelief

As it turned out, Tommy's cousin Mickey didn't need much convincing. It started off with a phone call while they were in the car with Tommy asking him to meet at a friend's place.

"Hey, Mick? I'm havin' kind of a crisis. If you're willing to help, I'll explain when you get here. It's too long for the phone. Yeah. Meet me at this address." He paused as Dawn whispered something to him. "And bring your kit that you use for Last Rites." Tommy gave the address that Faith supplied and he flipped his phone shut.

"That's it? That's all you had to say?" Xander asked.

"Getting him to show is easy. Getting him to _stay_ is your job."

"Actually, that would be Dawn's job." Xander shifted in his seat and quirked a half smile at Tommy's curious look. "More of that long, honking backstory we owe you. And by the way, telling a priest to bring their Last Rites kit without saying why is the creepiest of creepies."

"Ah." Tommy smelled issues, but not of the kind he would normally bust someone's balls over.

Once they reached the house, Dawn took charge. "Okay, we need to clear the living room out as much as possible. See if we can keep Xander from having to rebuild too much of his own furniture."

"I appreciate that." Xander and Faith began to work on getting the furniture moved to other rooms, along with Robin and Jerry.

Once the couch and coffee table were gone, Dawn motioned Tommy over. "Okay Mr. Gavin-"

"Call me Tommy," he interrupted. "Anyone who goes to this kind of trouble for me, well, you get a free pass no matter how young you are."

"Fair enough." Dawn gave him a winning smile. "This is gonna seem wierd, but you need to do what we say once we get started. Any unexpected changes will make it that much harder to get your ghosts to leave you alone."

"In other words, follow the procedure?"

"Exactly. Once the furniture is cleared, we're going to draw a circle on the floor and you have to sit inside of it. Do _not_ leave the circle. The ghosts won't be able to get to you in there, but they _will_ be able to talk to you, which is kind of the point. They've latched onto you as an anchor to tie them to the mortal world, so you're the one that has to give them a reason to let go and move on.

"While this is going on, we may end up getting visited by other creatures. Demons, vampires, other stuff. They'll be able to pick up on the magical energies and they'll want to bask in it, kind of like a spiritual tanning spa. We'll take care of them. Or rather, Xander, Faith, Robin and Jerry will. I'm going to help you figure out what the ghosts want, you're going to talk to them until it seems like you've found what they want and once you get that, your cousin is going to say the Last Rites prayer."

"And nobody else here can do that?"

"For it to work on the spiritual level, it has to be an actual ordained priest."

"Why did I know you were going to say that?"

From there, other than setting the house to as secured as it could be, which was pretty darned secure. Xander had discovered the metal shutters that were used to protect ones windows during a hurricane and had apparently had a field day. Once they were all shut, the hope was that it would force any nosy demons   
into bottlenecking at the front and back doors.

While the preparations to the living room floor were underway, there was a knock at the door. Jerry went to have a look through the peephole. "Tommy, it's your cousin."

Faith waved to Jerry to bring the new arrival in, and drifted back to stand between Xander and Tommy's cousin. An older man with thinning hair, wearing the traditional Roman collar and carrying a small, simple wooden box was led in.

"Hey Mick," Tommy greeted, somewhere between weary and resigned.

"Tommy. What's the emergency?"

Dawn stepped forward. "Hello Father Gavin. Nice to meet you."

He waved a hand. "Eh. Call me Mickey." He glanced around at the 'redecoration' that had been going on and raised an eyebrow. "What's all this?"

"So glad you asked." With that, Dawn launched into a very quick explanation of the troubles that Tommy has been enduring, how Faith, Xander, Robin and Dawn were able to do something about it, and how Jerry had done much the same thirty years prior.

Mickey scratched his chin. "So basically, I'm saying the Last Rites without any physical body to administer the sacraments to?"

"Not exactly. It's more like an exorcism, only there's no actual body to exorcise the spirit from," Dawn clarified. "But the shawl that you wear for Last Rites has power of its own and it symbolizes how you're helping the souls that can't move on."

"And you think this'll help Tommy stop seeing his dead cousin and comrades and all?"

"Can it hurt?"

Mickey leaned back in surprise for a moment. "I guess not."

"So long as you're willing to suspend your disbelief until you can't anymore, I'm good with that." Dawn replied. She glanced around at the circle and the layout of the room before nodding decisively.

"Okay you guys, I think we're about ready to start. Xander, did you want to say something before we get started?"

Xander padded forward, standing so that the others in the room could see him. "Alrighty guys. We're about to embark on some serious Wierd here. Two of you have never dealt with this sort of thing before, and one of you has been out of it for a long time. Just stick to the game plan, and if one of us, meaning myself, Faith, Dawn or Robin tells you to do something, don't ask questions until we're all done here. This is gonna be a little scary. Or maybe a lot scary. If you stick to the plan, we'll get through this. We always do." He paused and glanced to Dawn. "You ready to take down the wards?"

Dawn nodded. "Willow told me how."

"Okay. Then the last thing I have to say is, if you have to go to the bathroom, do it now. If you're not sure, do it anyway. Better now than in the middle of whatever's about to happen."


	26. The Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Chapter revolves around communicating with the spirits of dead children.

After a quick conference, it was determined that Faith was going to man the front door by herself. The bulk of any curious demons were going to be more concerned with finding the mystical energies than stealth, so she got the bulk of the work. Robin and Jerry were going to be covering the back door, while Xander was going to bob between the two, while keeping Dawn, Mickey and Tommy from being interrupted, should a demon slip through.

Once Dawn was certain that everyone was in place, she began by murmuring the incantation that would disable the anti-ghost wards on the house. She walked around the circle lighting the candles placed for Tommy's protection before straightening up. Dawn took a deep breath, opened the book she had sitting on a barstool nearby and began to recite.

"Spirits of the fallen,  
Lost on your path.   
Bring close your burdens,  
But please stay your wrath.

"Come find your anchor,  
The living that fetters you here.  
Tell him the tie that binds you,  
The task that keeps you near."

Dawn walked around the circle, sprinkling pinches of dust that she'd been instructed to use by Willow on each one, causing a faint blue haze to fill the room.

"First we call the children,  
Taken before their time.   
Your bodies could not be rescued,  
Come tell the living why."

A light, ethreal breeze began to swirl in the room, causing the mist to spin with it. Mickey and Tommy began to look around with an unsettled expression on their faces. After several long moments, the two small children and the teenage girl that Tommy had been unable to rescue successfully drifted in the room and stood in front of Tommy outside of the circle.

Mickey jumped when he saw them. He'd had 'ghosts' of his own that he'd seen when he was still drinking, but he'd never seen anyone else's ghosts before.

The apparent leader, a little girl whose spectral visage was covered in soot, was clutching a cat to her chest. "I thought you liked us, Tommy! Why are you trying to make us go?" Tommy remembered her as the little girl who died of asphyxiation, who had pleaded with him to save her kitten.

Tommy looked at Dawn, who nodded encouragingly at him. "I - I do like you. But you shouldn't have to stay here."

Dawn glanced to Mickey and gave him a nod, then. Mickey stepped around and unobtrusively began performing the exorcism rite, murmuring under his breath in Latin. Dawn blinked, never having heard Latin pronounced with a New York accent before. It sounded strange to her. She was used to Giles' more precise, British-flavored Latin. (And she refused to even acknowledge Willow's Latin grammar - who knew that Latin could sound California Girl-ish?)

"Why should we have to go? We wanna stay here with you!" the little black boy protested, his spectral image looked half burned. Tommy had pulled him out of a fire, the boy's body so charred that the skin was sliding off of his flesh like wrapping paper.

"I know, and I tried to help you," Tommy said gently, his voice growing more confident now that he was talking to the same ghosts he'd been seeing for some time now. "But there's some things that firemen and doctors just can't fix. I promise, we did everything we could for you."

The teenager that had joined the ghostly crowd only recently after being impaled on a barrier post from a car accident, folded her arms petulantly. "You didn't try to rescue me."

Tommy shook his head sadly. "Sweetheart, you were dead the instant that post went through your chest. There's no first aid for that."

Dawn shifted to stay out of Mickey's way as he sprinkled holy water on the floor next to the children. "Tell them why they need to let go and move on, Tommy," she suggested softly.

He liked his lower lip. "You guys shouldn't be here, still angry and suffering. You should -" He glanced uncertainly at Mickey, still muttering in Latin, "-You should be in heaven, at peace. Not hanging around a firefighter. Your families would want you to be resting and happy until you can see 'em again."

"But we wanna stay!" the little girl protested. "We didn't want to die."

"I didn't want you to die either, sweetheart."

"Then how come we did?" The ghosts were all fixated on Tommy, hanging on his every word.

"Because -" Tommy glanced at Mickey in his priest's garb and made a face. He couldn't believe he was about to say something that he'd refused to believe when his eldest daughter had been hurt. "Because God has a plan. Problem is, we don't know what that is. It could be so that he could spare you more suffering later in life, or some other reason. That's the part that we don't know. But to do that, you have to go be with Him now. That way, He knows you're safe."

The three ghostly children didn't seem to register this at first. "Will we ever see you again, Tommy?" the little girl asked, this time not angrily.

"One day, you will," he reassured her. After a pause, he added. "I'll miss you guys." And he was surprised to discover that he'd meant it.

"We'll miss you too, Tommy." The three ghosts began to fade, as Mickey was winding down his Latin.

"_In nomine Patris, et filii, et Spiritus Sancti_. And may you find peace.," Mickey whispered harshly, the last bit added in almost involuntarily. He looked down at Tommy. "Never thought I'd hear those words come out of your mouth, Tommy."

"Never thought I'd say 'em." Tommy exchanged a look with Jerry, a look of mixed approval and sorrow on the older man's face.

Dawn bobbed in place excitedly. "You did such a good job, you guys. You'd never know that this was the first time either of you had done this."

Tommy shrugged, not from modesty. The truth was, he was always gentler with children than anyone else.

Any further pep talk from Dawn was interrupted by Faith, who was looking out of the peep hole for the front door. "Heads up. Tall, dark and growly incoming," she announced, pausing for a few moments while she watched. Abruptly, she jerked the door open and swung her sword with both hands. She was rewarded with the sound of a demon emitting a horrible gurgling noise, followed by the meatier sound of a demon hitting the pavement.

"Looks like there's more inbound, too." Faith added. "And they don't seem at all happy."

Dawn winced. "Ooh. It must be the added power of a priest making them mad."

Xander gave Dawn a look. "You couldn't mention this _before_ we started?"


	27. Interlude - Moving Day

"Not a bad place Giles swung for us." Xander observed as he and Faith looked at their new-maybe-temporary-maybe-not home in a New York suburb.

"Mm-hm."

"A little small, but you get that a lot on the east coast."

"Yup."

"Sure would be nice if our movers hadn't had their rig break down on the way here, wouldn't it?"

"Mm."

"What with them having all our stuff and all."

"Uh-huh."

"They redid the kitchen before we got here. You can tell from the way the wood was cut."

"Yeah?"

"Of course, it's the emptiest new kitchen ever. Just look at all that empty."

"You're not lettin' go of this anytime soon, are you?"

"Probably not."

Faith had been listening to this riff ever since they had gotten the call from the movers stating that they'd encountered engine trouble. Their stuff would be a couple hours at minimum, while they waited for another rig to come and take over the trailer.

But the worst part was that Xander had wanted to use a U-Haul and have them do it themselves. But Giles had insisted that having a moving company help would be more expedient, and Faith hadn't been terribly interested in schlepping and toting boxes for hours on end.So, Xander had been harping on this whole 'house is so empty' deal for quite some time now.

Xander's next expansion on the 'no furniture' theme looked to be kicking into high gear as well. "And how about that garage! Plenty of room for your motorcycle and the car. Or, well, the car. If the motorcycle ever gets here."

Faith got an idea. She sidled up behind Xander and curled an arm casually around his waist. "Yeah, but on the bright side, the place has wicked echo for our voices."

"Ah, that's because the acoustics are good. What with nothing at all to dampen the sound."

"But the echo effect is kinda cool, yeah?" Faith persisted.

"I- well, a little yeah."

"We could make all kinds of sounds and the noise would just go echoing around forever." Faith snugged her other arm around his waist.

"Probably. But we'd probably get tired of standing around. No furniture to sit or lay down on, or-- hey, let go of that." Xander looked down at Faith's suddenly busy hands. "I'm complaining here."

"We could make noises that we'd never get to happen with all our stuff in the house. And the moving van isn't due to get here for at _least_ two hours." The slightly amplified sound of a zipper being lowered echoed faintly and suddenly Xander seemed to be having trouble keeping his knees locked.

"But, but, the tile, the carpet..." He trailed off, any further explanation seemed to be too difficult for him to manage more.

"It ain't a proper housewarming until someones got rug or linoleum burn." Faith stood on tiptoe and breathed in his ear.

As it turned out, the acoustics were even better than Faith had thought. At least, if the movers had anything to say about it, as they stood uncertainly on the front porch.

"Maybe we should leave the stuff on the lawn?" one of them suggested while trying to firmly ignore the lusty sounds rattling about from inside the house.


	28. The Crew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Chapter revolves around communicating with the spirits of fictional firefighters whose backstories state they died on 9/11.

Faith was already busy at the front door; Jerry and Robin had yet to see action at the back.

"Faith, you good up there?" Xander called.

"Yeah, I got it." Sounds of blades striking home punctuated Faith's assurance.

Xander listened for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction. "Dawn, go."

Dawn began to hurriedly start the incantation again, her voice getting a bit squeakier. Spellcasting under stress, (such as when demons are trying to get in to dip their appendages in the magicks), wasn't her strong suit.

"Comrades of the supplicant,  
Fallen in flames.  
Brothers of duty,  
State now your claims."

Once more Dawn went 'round with the dust sprinkled on the candles, this time creating a faint red haze in the air. The forms of Bobby Vincent, Ricky Davis, Vito Costella and Billy Warren shimmered into view as they approached the circle and all stopped to consider Tommy. Ricky, Vito and Billy were all represented spectrally by simple burns and abrasions in various places on their ghostly forms, . Bobby seemed to be having a rougher time of it, because he had to keep reaching up to keep his own head from falling off.

"What're you doin', Tommy?" Vito demanded to know, apparently elected spokesghost.

"What do you mean?" Tommy looked around uncertainly as Mickey began to recite in Latin again.

"You, y'shithead! What. Are. You. Doing?" Vito snapped, looking very much like he'd push or slap Tommy if he could. "Bad enough that you weren't there to help us in the Towers! But you just couldn't let go, could you? You climb into a bottle and don't come out 'til your cousin drags you kicking and screaming to A.A, and when the wife says she wants a divorce, what do you do? Climb right back in!"

Tommy paled slightly, uncomfortably aware that both Mickey and Jerry had heard that. "I dunno what you want from me, Vito. I just couldn't- I mean, I tried to get up there, but the stairs were blocked. Then we got the call to pull out and-"

"That ain't what we're talkin' about, asshole!" Bobby chimed in, gesturing emphatically at Tommy. "We stuck around because you seemed like you needed a little extra help. Only you ain't gettin' any better. Instead of doin' the work to sort your head out, you're trying to take shortcuts, the easy way- aw, shit. Ricky, help me out?" Bobby's head had fallen off his neck and was still talking. His ghost body didn't seem to know that anything had happened, and was still giving rude gestures to Tommy.

Tommy looked from Bobby's head, to his body, and over to Ricky who was helping refasten his head. There was no question. This one was going down in the record books for the Weirdest Day Ever.

While the ghosts were fussing over the occasionally beheaded Bobby, the back door burst open and a demon began trying to get in. Robin took the brunt of the attack, blocking with the reflexes of a seasoned demon hunter while Jerry hung back, letting Robin draw the demon in before wading into the fray, hacking with axe and halligan.

Xander looked past them to the back yard. So far, no extra demons had showed up there. He turned his attention to the front. "Faith?"

"I'm good!"

He arched his eyebrow at her tone. She'd sounded a little strained to him. He picked up his favorite axe and opened the window by the front door. Faith was struggling with a particularly big demon. Because she was trying to prevent him from entering, she was a little hindered in her actions. Xander shrugged and swung the axe with one hand, catching the demon behind the knee and toppling him. Faith took advantage of his fall and buried her sword in his chest.

Faith looked at Xander. "Good timing."

"I have my moments. You wanna switch to daggers?"

"Nah, it's harder to kill demons in one hit with those." She shook her head.

"Okay." Xander pulled back in and shut the window, going back to take up his post watching over Dawn.

Meanwhile, the dead firefighters were still lambasting Tommy. Or three of them were - Billy remained as silent as he once was in life, chewing pensively on a cigar. Ricky was taking a turn at talking. "You're such a prick, Tommy! You talked to those kids, no problem. But when it's us, your comrades in arms, your _brothers_ in the FDNY, you got nothin'! Sitting there, as calm as if you were watchin' the game havin' a beer!"

Tommy snarled, jerking to his feet and only just remembering not to leave the circle like Dawn had told him to. "Listen you shitheads, you think I don't remember? You think I don't miss you? I was the one that got the plaque made for you in the firehouse! I go down to every probie class that makes it to graduation and tell 'em about the four of yez. They're building a new training center and I put your names in for consideration in having parts of it named after you!"

Vito took back over. "And that's fine Tom! But then you lurk around our graves sometimes, you sit at home alone and drink in the dark -"

"I talk to people sometimes!"

"You talk to Jimmy, and how's that workin' out for you, by the way?"

Tommy swallowed and decided to gloss over the issues he and Jimmy were having. "What do you guys want from me?" he demanded.

Back to Bobby. "Quit livin' in the past, Tom. Throw those god damn bottles out, go get your wife back and get your head screwed on straight." As Bobby said that, his own head wobbled precariously on his neck and he reached up quickly to prevent it from taking another tumble. "Can you do that, Tommy?"

Tommy chewed on his lower lip and then glanced at Billy, who was the only of the currently assembled ghosts not to die on 9/11. "Billy, you got anything to say?"

Billy shook his head slowly.

"Then what're you doing here?"

Billy shrugged. "I just wanted to hang out with the guys for a while."

Tommy blinked at that, and almost cracked a smile. "I'll do my best, guys."

"You'd better do more than that, pal," Vito took over again. "We hear anymore of this moping shit, we're gonna come back and kick your skinny white Irish ass up over your head."

"I hear you." Tommy swallowed hard. "I'll see you guys."

"Not for a long, long time, if you know what's good for you," Billy rumbled.

The four ghosts all raised their hands and waved once before Vito turned to Mickey. "Lay the blessings on us, Father Gavin." Mickey nodded slowly and completed his Latin rites, splashing the floor with holy water once more, and the assembled ghosts of the fallen from 62 truck slowly faded from view.

There was a slight lull in the attempts by the demons to get in the house, causing a suddenly deafening silence. Tommy rubbed at his face before looking to his cousin. "Mick?"

"Yeah?"

"Think we could start going to A.A meetings again?"

"Sure, Tommy. Sure."


	29. Jimmy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Chapter revolves around communicating with the spirit of Tommy's dead cousin and fellow firefighter that died on 9/11.

The quiet of the moment that Tommy had just experienced was rather rudely broken by both the front and back doors being violently rattled by another few demons trying to make their way inside.

"Sweet chrome plated Christ, they're like evil vacuum cleaner salesmen," Jerry grumbled as he and Robin went back to work.

"Except less cleaning, more ooze," Robin noted.

"That's what I like about you kid. Always findin' the bright side of things."

Faith grunted as she intercepted two demons at once, arms and legs whirling fiendishly as she worked to keep one demon off balance while getting a solid hit in on the other, than switching off. Seeing that the Slayer was occupied, a third smaller demon juked around her and tried to get to where the magic was happening.

Xander saw his cue and barrelled into the smaller demon, knocking him back toward the front door so that it'd keep things clear until Faith could free up some time and pointy objects.

Hurriedly, Dawn began her final incantation.

"Final of the fallen,  
Staying at your own behest.  
See the eyes of our cousin,  
Let your troubles off your, er, chest."

Tommy blinked. "Wait, what? What kind of magic spell was that?"

"It's more about the intent than the words!" Dawn hissed, embarassed at being caught bobbling her lines. She walked around sprinkling more dust, this time creating a slight orange and yellow haze. Tommy felt uncomfortably like there was a fire nearby. Meanwhile, Mickey once more began to murmur in Latin.

A heavier breeze picked up, blowing everyone's hair around and making the candles flicker eerily. The haze coalesced and Jimmy Keefe's ghostly form took shape. He stood near to where Xander and the demon he'd picked off were still wrestling, arms folded and a death glare aimed at Tommy.

"So, couldn't deal with us by yourself, huh? You had to go and get the Ouija board and incense crowd involved." He squinted at the melee at the back door. "Holy shit. Chief?"

Jerry gave a growl of exertion as he buried his axe in the small of the demon's back, giving Robin the opening he needed to jab his knives into the demon's major organs in alphabetical order. He straightened up and saw Xander occupied. "You gonna be okay for a minute, kid?"

Robin nodded his assent. Jerry moved over to the scuffle on the floor. "Yeah, it's me Jimmy. Wouldja talk to Tommy already? I'm too old for this shit." He emphasized his feelings by spiking the pointy end of his halligan through the demon's hand, pinning it to the floor and freeing Xander up to do the cleanup. Jerry hefted his own axe in both hands and rejoined Robin at the back.

"Well Jimmy, as it turns out, I'm not just seeing ghosts and pink elephants because of drinking or PTSD. I'm being friggin' haunted." Tommy scowled. "By my own cousin, no less!"

"I hadda stay and make sure things were going to be okay! You made a _promise_ Tommy!" Jimmy's voice went up a decible or two. "You swore you'd keep an eye on my wife and kid! Make sure Sheila wasn't being chased by some other asshole firefighter, make sure Damien grows up into an okay kid!"

"Hey, I've been keeping tabs on Damien, okay pal?" Tommy jabbed a finger at Jimmy, his own voice rasing in volume as well. "He helped the family when we asked him to. When he was caught with pills in his room I sat him down and ripped him a new one. If he ever asks about going to probie school, I still got your god damn firefighter badge ready and waiting. Don't think I haven't been lookin' out for Damien, asshole!"

"Alright, fine, you pass on that one. And I appreciate it, cuz, I really do." Jimmy's face became a thundercloud. "Which doesn't explain why you decided to interpret 'taking care of Sheila' by starting from her vagina and working your way outward from there!"

"That's not what I meant to happen!"

"Then what _did_ you mean to happen? 'Cause when I ghosted by your window, it sure looked like you were going above and beyond! Just because Janet wants a divorce doesn't give you the green light to start banging my wife!"

"Christ, Jimmy." Tommy folded his arms.

"Talk to him, Tommy," Dawn murmured softly. "He's not going to go away until you and him have it out."

Tommy looked at the floor and shook his head angrily. "You know, Jimmy, for the first year, she was inconsolable. It was like a shroud of grief, this wall that kept her from letting anyone get too near. Like she was afraid if she let it out, she'd forget about you."

Jimmy's angry expression softened slightly. "I remember."

"It wasn't until a year or two later that she would actually leave the house for anything other than shopping and family get-togethers. Then someone hit on her at a department Christmas party. Sheila freaked out and screamed for help, and I just about ripped that asshole's head off. Got myself suspended for two weeks, remember?"

"Yeah." Jimmy smiled at the memory. "You spent the whole two weeks drunk off your ass and proud as hell. I never figured being a ghost could be so much fun." Then Jimmy's expression resumed its anger. "Which is why it pisses me off beyond the telling of it that you'd sleep with Sheila yourself!"

"It's not like I woke up one morning and thought, 'hey, it'd really roast Jimmy's balls if I put it to Sheila', you jackoff!"

"Then what? What in the world could make you do something like that?"

Tommy's jaw clenched visibly, and he paced around the small circle he had to stay inside. "Sheila said she actually wanted to get dolled up and go out, have dinner, just the two of us to catch up. She hadn't said anything like that for so long, how could I say no?

"We ate at Luigi's, she had a bottle of wine, I stuck to ginger ale and the food and we just talked. About the divorce, about you, about Damien, the whole nine yards. We had a nice night, I drove her home, she said we should do this more often, like a regular thing." Tommy scratched his chin. "And then out of the blue, she kissed me."

"So why didn't you stop her?" Jimmy growled.

"At first, I was too surprised. Then later, when we talked again and things started happening, I just - I don't know. Of everyone we know, Sheila and I are the ones that knew you the best, Jimmy. The only people we can talk to about you is, y'know... each other. I can't speak for Sheila, but for me it's like-" Tommy chewed on his lip. When he began speaking again, his voice was unsteady. "It's like we're all we have left to remember you by. Us and Damien. And when we got closer, we got a little too close."

Jimmy's expression lost some of its anger. "So how're we gonna fix this, Tom?"

Tommy exhaled slowly. "Well, I dunno if you could see before, but I was talking to the guys before you. They said I should, y'know, stop being full of shit and do what I can to get Janet back. I'll still look after Sheila and Damien, I won't go back on that. But I'm gonna break things off with Sheila. It's what I gotta do to make things right. With her, with myself -" He swallowed and whispered, "-with you. You're the last one I wanted to hurt in all this, Jimmy."

"You think you can do that and still keep your promise?" Jimmy asked, his anger forgotten.

"I'll find a way to make it work."

Jimmy gave Tommy a long, long look as the fighting died down at the entrances to the house. "You promise? You'll make it work, keep Sheila in the loop and stay out of her bed?"

"I will, Jimmy. I swear," Tommy murmured.

"Alright. And you pull your head outta your ass and take care of your family too." Jimmy waited for Tommy's return nod before he actually cracked a smile. "Knew I could count on you, cuz. Keep your nose cleah, yeah?"

"Yeah Jimmy, you bet."

Jimmy nodded and fiddled with his finger, the one that had been severed when he'd died. He looked to Mickey and gave a 'bring it on' gesture. "Let's have it Mick. I got places to go."

"Sure thing, Jimmy." Mickey looked like he was contemplating taking up drinking again, or at least heading for an abbey and not setting foot outside for a few years. He finished his words in Latin and began to sprinkle the holy water.

"Hey Jimmy?" Tommy called suddenly.

"Yeah Tommy?"

Tommy let out a shuddering breath. "I'll miss you."

"You'll see me again." Jimmy Keefe gave him a crooked smile and slowly faded from view.

The candles flared once, brightly, and then guttered out. The room was dark, and a few demon bodies were laying at the entrances to the room. Faith, Xander, Jerry and Robin all came back in the room, unsure of what to say.

Tommy shot a questioning look at Dawn and looked down at the circle. She nodded and waved him out. "So, what do you guys do after a night of ghost banishing."

Xander shrugged. "Pizza, movies, board games, clean up the bodies. You know, the usual."

"Pizza? I could eat." Tommy found he was suddenly starving.

"I'll order!" Dawn offered.

"No!" Xander, Faith and Robin all shouted in unision. As an aside to the others, Faith added, "She likes anchovies."

Tommy snorted. "Gah. And you thought I needed the exorcism?"


	30. Interlude - Full Circle

"Off duty wear?"

"Check."

"Hygiene items?"

"Check."

"Bunker gear?"

"Check. It's in Xander's car so I can grab it before I show up."

"Wait, why's Xander's car going to be there?"

"Didn't I tell you? He got on as a volunteer at the firehouse."

"You two have got to be the luckiest people I know."

"It's hard work, bein' this awesome."

It wasn't quite time for Faith to leave for her first day as an FDNY firefighter, so she decided to kill some of that time by calling Peter.

Peter was chuckling at Faith's last statement. "Nice to hear that your self-image is intact."

"It is what it is, yo. I'm a little worried about the whole 'woman in the firehouse' bit, though." Faith shrugged, even though she knew he couldn't see her. "I mean, when I was a probie, I had you to help."

"You knew going in that you were going to encounter this no matter where you go," Peter admonished. "All you have to do is exactly what you did with us. Get the job done, and it won't matter whether your reproductive organs are an 'innie' or an 'outie'. And you _know_ you can get the job done. They might try to disinclude you at first, but you can't let it rattle you. In fact, if you tackle 'em head on about it, it might derail whatever moronic schemes they're going to try and cook up."

"Except none of these guys were gracious enough to come by my graduation and give a peace offering."

"Sorry, kiddo. There's only one of me, and that mold, she is broken."

Faith chuckled. "Damn right it is."

"Seriously, Dad's crew may be a little rattled by the thought of working with a woman, but if you do the job the way it's supposed to be done, none of 'em will give you any static over it once they see that. You can do this. A few weeks, and they won't care beyond some of them giving your magnificent rack a second, third and fourth look." Peter's voice was light, soothing.

"Are you sure you're gay? Since when did you check out my rack?"

"Yes Faith, I'm gay, not blind." Peter snorted. "Believe it or not, we _can_ appreciate feminine beauty."

"Appreciate away." Faith looked at the clock. "Alright Pete, I better get going. Don't wanna be late and all. Say hi to Steven for me."

"Will do."

"And, I'll give Xander a smack on the ass for you."

"That's my girl. Go get 'em, Faith."


	31. Epilogue

It wasn't a change that happened overnight, or even in a few weeks. In fact, it took quite some time, and a lot of stumbling blocks along the way, but eventually it happened. Something that Xander and Faith were discussing as they made their way through traffic to get to their destination.

"I think my personal favorite moment was the day that Sheila came to the firehouse and pitched a fit." Faith shook her head reminiscently. "Like anyone's going to notice someone screaming their head off in the middle of that neighborhood."

"I still have to go with the time that Colleen had her teen angst fit and ran away," Xander disagreed. "I figured a vein was going to pop out of Tommy's forehead and try to strangle us all when he found out that his oldest daughter had somehow ended up crashing on our couch."

"Well, he'd spent all that time searching, him and his brother. But we got her talked down. Guess all that time dealing with baby Slayers had a-" Faith snapped her fingers, trying to jog the words loose. "Whaddyacallit?"

"Unexpected side benefit?"

"Yeah, and nobody saw it comin' either."

They bantered back and forth about recent events until they pulled up in front of a large (for New York) house, the sign with the realtor's company still out with the 'sold' message nestled on top.

"This is wierd," Faith commented.

"Which part?"

"The part where we're doing something so normal. I almost expect-"

Xander gave her a mock stern look. "I know you're not trying to put the jinx on the evening."

Faith shrugged. "I gotta make my own fun somehow."

"There's nothing wrong with normal. Except for the part that we can't really talk about our alternative hobbies."

"Yeah, 'cause that'd go over great with the rest of the crew. Franco talks about his flavor of the week, the probie and Garrity say something dumb, Jerry loses on yet another football game and by the way, I killed four vampires and three demons over the weekend." Faith snorted.

"Kind of a shame, really. You could out-macho the whole crew at once, if we could talk about that stuff." Xander chuckled. "Alright. No more stalling. Let's go be normal-ish."

They got out of the car and made their way to the front door, Xander ringing the doorbell. After a few moments, the door opened and Tommy poked his head out. He gave the two of them a glare. "What, did you get lost and try to drive halfway to Jersey?"

"Y'know, for someone that's having a housewarming party, you're not very warming," Xander accused.

"Besides, we brought presents," Faith added, holding up a wrapped box.

Tommy did an instant one eighty. "Oh. Well, then by all means, co-"

"Hey now!" Xander interrupted sternly. "What'd we tell you about that?"

"Oh, right." Tommy made a 'my fault' gesture and simply held the door open invitingly without actually saying anything."

"You'll get it." Faith patted Tommy kindly on the arm as they entered the house.

They hadn't even been in the house for more than a minute before Xander was targeted by a small, redheaded missile. "Xander!"

Xander reached down and scooped Tommy's son up off the floor, throwing the child over his shoulder. "Hey hey, the Wrath of Connor!" He amused himself by swinging Connor around in a slow circle while the boy giggled and protested.

Connor was followed shortly by his mother. "Xander, does that boy have you LoJacked? I swear I didn't even hear you come in," she said, exasperated at having to chase after Connor.

"No harm, no foul. Nice to see you, Janet." Xander beamed and gave Janet a peck on the cheek, still holding her child on his shoulders.

Faith, meanwhile, had gotten snared by another of the Gavin clan. Colleen had come thundering down the stairs to claim Faith's attention for a few minutes. Primarily, to show off her new leather jacket.

"Isn't it awesome?" Colleen was saying. "I had to fight with Dad for days before he'd let me get it, and I have to do some stuff around the house to pay him back, but I got it!"

"Lookin' good, brat." Faith tousled Colleen's hair. "But I still ain't teachin' you to ride a motorcycle 'til Tommy gives me the green light."

"Damn." Colleen shook her fist half-playfully at her father.

The occasion was a housewarming party, commemorating the fact that Tommy and Janet could actually stand to live in the same house again, sleep in the same bed, and otherwise be together. After Tommy had literally exorcised his ghosts, he'd been able to take several long steps back and really think about what he was doing to himself, Janet and the kids. It was by no means a complete work, and Tommy wasn't ever going to be in danger of being nominated for Father of the Year, but he did slowly begin to once more resemble the man that Janet had married so very many years ago.

Once Xander and Faith were able to extract themselves from the clutches of Tommy's kids, they made the rounds of the party. Some of Tommy's friends from other firehouses, his father and his uncle, some of Janet's friends from the kids' schools. And, of course, the crew.

Garrity was holding forth on one of his less informed opinions. "...so then I decided that if Tommy can go back into A.A, the least I could do is help with the whole 'making amends' thingie. Y'know, be supportive of my crew and all."

"You do realize that the making amends is supposed to be for making up for your own screwups, not someone else's, right Sean?" Fraco asked skeptically.

"If he did that, he wouldn't have any time to fight fires," Faith chimed in from behind him.

"Yeah, Sean's a part of his very own support group. Retards Anonymous. Very small meetings, not much conversation." Lou nodded wisely, tapping ash from his cigar into a nearby ashtray.

Tommy naturally gravitated to the group, sensing ball-busting was afoot. "Probie about ready for his thirty day chip yet?"

Silletti frowned thunderously, then brightened. "You offering to be my sponsor, Tommy?"

Amid the general hilarity, Tommy gave an approving nod. "See, you're gettin' it, Probie."

Silletti, encouraged by his zinger, turned to target Faith.

Faith wasn't having any of that. "You make one crack about me, probie, and I'll pull your scrotum up over your head just so I can punch you in your nutface."

Silletti's mouth shut with an audible click. Garrity scowled. "See, now why don't comebacks like that work for me?"

"She's scarier than you are," Silletti mumbled.

As the rest of the crew chortled, Tommy interrupted with what he was going to say originally, "Sorry guys, I gotta kidnap Faith and Xander for a few minutes."

"Will I be returned in my current, pristine condition?" Xander asked haughtily.

"Nah, you'll just look like you always do."

"Oh, thank god." Xander brushed his hand across his brow in exaggerated relief.

Tommy led them both off to the back porch, joining Chief Riley who was having a bit of quiet and a cigar, and instead of talking to Xander about whatever was on his mind, Tommy simply stood and waited for something while watching Xander.

"I have something on my face?"

"Nope."

"My hair's on fire?"

"Nope."

"Clearly, the Gavin is a wily creature and wishes to keep his secrets. Alright, I'm game." Xander began to glance around for a few moments, uncertain as to what he was supposed to be looking at. Faith began to grow bored and shifted her feet a little. The clumping of her boot-clad feet caused Xander to look down.

"Holy hell!" Xander pointed in delight. "You guys are using the deck plans I taught you!"

"Mm-hm," Tommy nodded in satisfaction as Xander was clearly approving of the wooden back deck that Tommy had painstakingly built with the help of Lou, Franco and Garrity. In secret - they'd wanted to see if they could do the job without Xander hovering over them.

"Nice job, Tom. Looks even, looks sturdy. Just make sure you water-seal it before anyone gets a chance to dump liquid on it." Xander nodded in approval.

"Hah! Pay up, Tommy!" Jerry suddenly chimed in.

"Shit." He'd had a bet with Jerry that Xander wouldn't notice that the wood wasn't yet water-sealed. He slapped a ten dollar bill into Jerry's hand with more than a little disgust. "I hope you buy a twelve pack of beer that gives you the runs."

"Your pain only makes me stronger, Tom." Jerry gave a pleased smile. "Did you tell 'em about the thing?"

Tommy snapped his fingers. "Oh, right." He directed his attention at both Faith and Xander. "So, you remember when we said that we'd talk about helpin' you out, after my life was as straightened up as it could be and we got the kids all settled?" Tommy waited for their nods before he crossed his arms. "Well, now that I'm settled, I'll help when I can. Between the stories you've told me and the ones that Jerry had from back in the day with the other-" He gestured at Faith inarticulately for a few moments.

"Slayer," she supplied.

"That." He pointed at Faith in confirmation. "And I can't believe some of the shit that's been going on under the world's nose. I gotta do a little somethin'."

Xander and Faith exchanged a look and Faith nodded discreetly. "Fair enough. We'll try to keep it down to emergency situations only, 'cause you don't need to be giving your family any more reasons to worry that you won't come home again," Xander explained.

"Perfect."

Faith tilted her head. "You don't have to prove anything, y'know. Why do you want to do this."

"Why? 'Cause, well, I've been full of shit for a while now, and now that I'm getting it out of my system, I think I need to do a little something that's outside of my comfort zone." Tommy shrugged. "Now that I know, I can't just not know. Y'know?"

"I wish I didn't, but I do. Welcome aboard, Tommy." Xander shook his hand.

"And you can still call on me for help, kid. Not so much for the fighting, but any coverups you need, I'm there," Jerry added.

Tommy shot a glance at Jerry. "You sure, Jer? What about Jeannie?" Jerry's wife had contracted Alzheimer's and Jerry was still making adjustments.

"I need somethin' that's doesn't center around my girl forgettin' me," Jerry rasped and looked away, unwilling to let his crew see him growing emotional. "I was planning to hire a nurse anyway."

"Well, that's something we _can_ offer you. The days of this gig being a volunteer only riff are over. You guys will be paid for helping," Xander stated.

Tommy and Jerry raised their eyebrows at the unexpected bonus. "What do we gotta do in return?" Tommy asked.

"Do lots of boring waiting, punctuated by a few minutes of terror. Avert the occasional apocalypse. You know, the usual."

"Work, work, work," Tommy complained.

"Any other questions?" Xander waited expectantly, and was rewarded with silence. "Fair enough. The New York branch of the Scoobies is open for business."

"Scoobies? That's what we're going to be called? You've gotta be friggin' kidding me." Tommy snorted in disgust.

Xander blinked and turned to Faith. "Do me a favor?"

"Here? Now? The thing with the bugle?" Faith waggled her eyebrows.

"No, not that. Just make me a promise. If I ever start to develop a fuhgeddabowdit accent, do that thing with the scrotum and the nutface to me until I get better?" Xander clasped his hands pleadingly.

"Consider it done."


End file.
